


Devil in the Bible Belt

by TinyBeautifulTales (MikeandHarveyTime)



Category: One Direction (Band), Shameless (US)
Genre: Drugs, F/F, F/M, M/M, Smoking, bad things are said to people and about people, both homosexual and heterosexual sex, casual mention of the adult film industry, casual mentions of giving sexual favors out to pay the rent, homophobic and homophobic slurs, rimming and fucking and fingering and kissing and pegging and subspacey zayn, subspacey harry, there are sexy times, there is discussion of mental health problems and abuse, this is a shameless au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 16:03:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1863864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikeandHarveyTime/pseuds/TinyBeautifulTales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Shameless AU starring Louis as Fiona and Harry as Jimmy/Steve. </p><p>(or, Louis is raising his seven siblings by himself, and Harry steals cars and crash lands into Louis' life. Together, they navigate south side Chicago and love.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devil in the Bible Belt

**Author's Note:**

> HEEEEEY. IF YOU'RE GOING TO READ THIS, STOP HERE: this story is a us shameless au. Any warnings that apply to that show, apply here. In this story, Louis has one tattoo: the far away on his bicep. Harry has all of his tattoos except for the ferns and the birds, and I utilize them my own ways that are not necessarily accurate outside of this story. Please, please be careful with this story. I do discuss manic depression, and I do discuss abusive parents and spouses.

If he’s being honest, Louis doesn’t remember much of his relationship with Nick Grimshaw. They spent most of it strung out on bad coke, anxious and fighting half of the time, fucking the other half. Louis’d been coping terribly with his mom leaving and with his stepdad killing himself. Some nights, he thinks he’s doing better. Other nights, he’s not so sure. 

 

Nick, in the club’s strobe lights, looks just as unruffled as he always did: pale, skinny, fingers drumming manically at the glass in his hand. Louis can’t look away from him. He was always looking for the next high, even if he did have to settle for sex. Nick still looks at him like he knows how Louis looks begging to be fucked. It’s not positive, but it is familiar, and the warmth of being wanted settles onto Louis’ overheated skin. 

 

Louis closes his eyes, tosses his head back onto Zayn’s shoulder, and lets the music throb through him. He isn’t imaging the sigh of relief from Jesy ahead of him when he looks away from Nick. Even as he pushes his hips back, him and Zayn rocking to the _thump thump thump_ of the bass, he can’t help hauling Jesy forward by her thighs. 

 

She’s always cared about him too much, “Are you okay?” 

 

He’s buzzing with the last two vodka pineapples he had, “Dance with me.” 

 

Her hair cascades behind them, a shining wave of purple and red, her breasts thrust up in his face. Louis has never liked girls. She’s the exception, maybe, this fearless girl he’s watched get Zayn off with a dildo over her ironing board. They’ve shared everything: first fucks, first fuck ups, first deaths in the family, not being able to make end’s meet, all of it. Louis couldn’t picture spending his night off with anyone else, doesn’t even want to dream of it. 

 

Zayn’s fingers are demanding on his waist. Louis’ never fucked him, never wanted to, but the way that him and Jesy _want_ each other makes Louis ache sometimes. He’s never seen two people so in love.

 

The club is too hot, too close, too much, as it always is. Louis taps Jesy on the shoulder gently, mouthing _drinks_ before he shimmies between couples and dancing singles to get to the edge of swarming bodies that make up the dance floor. People make faces at him, shove him forward. Louis just keeps walking. Once he exits the dance floor, it becomes a maze of navigating barely lit steps up to the bar, people staring in memory or in pity or in drunkenness. Louis tugs on the white scoop neck he’s wearing to settle it more evenly across his shoulders, and even though it still gapes open at the neck, showing off his sharp collarbones, Louis feels a bit better with it across his shoulders the right way. The bar is surprisingly empty for two in the morning. 

 

“Liam!” The man behind the bar turns to smile at him. Louis picks up extra shifts here sometimes, when they need servers, “Can I get a vodka pineapple?” 

 

“Make that two,” says a low voice from beside him. 

 

The hand possessively sliding into his back pocket combined with Liam’s wide, apologetic eyes effectively communicate exactly who’s crowding him forward into the edge of the bar. Louis and Nick’s relationship was a bit of a hurricane, caused a bit of drama no matter where they want. On his own, Nick is notorious enough. Add in the poor twink, and they were the south side’s biggest fuck ups. 

 

“How drunk are you, Nick?” Louis pushes back on the bar top, attempting to press out of Nick’s too warm grasp.

 

Nick laughs into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, “Not drunk enough to fuck you yet.” 

 

“ _Fuck off,”_ his next push back from the counter is more forceful, “I’ll call the police, Nick.” 

 

“ _Please,”_ Nick’s voice is thrumming with his barely contained laughter. His fingers skirt under the edge of Louis’ shirt like they used to, splaying over the bone of his hips, cradling there. It’s surprisingly gentle for this drug addled gun and drug dealer. Louis can’t remember any of his time with Nick, can only clearly remember Lottie nearly over dosing on cocaine Nick left out on the counter, “Like you’d call the police. So they can take your siblings away?” 

 

Liam’s eyes are wider, if that’s even possible, fingers outstretched for his iPhone resting on the rim of the bar. If Louis gives him the nod, he’ll call the police.

 

“You’re a slut, but you’re not fucking dumb.” 

 

It’s as close to a compliment as Louis ever got from Nick, backhanded and shitty. There’s a hole in his chest that Nick carved out with words just like this. He doesn’t have room for it anymore. Nights and days spent talking to Jesy, listening to her convince him that he deserved better didn’t go to waste for this man. Louis grits his teeth against his scream, shoves back as hard as he possibly can from the bar, and is almost relieved to hear Nick’s squawk of surprise. 

 

“ _Fuck you,”_ Louis sneers. He wants to spit on Nick Grimshaw, wants to get him arrested for selling guns to children in the fucking neighborhood he lives in, “Fuck you and your fucking backhanded compliments. Go to hell.” There are pale, long fingers around Nick’s upper arms that tighten as he struggles to hit Louis. 

 

Louis’ been hit enough times by enough people that it wouldn’t matter. In the uneven neon of the strobe lights, he takes a moment to look at the person holding Nick back. He’s tall with dark curls, and he really only looks soft enough to touch in the jagged edges of flashing lights from the dance floor. His eyes remain fixed evenly on Louis as he says to the bartender, “I’ve got those drinks.” 

 

“No, you don’t,” Louis doesn’t need to be taken care of. The gaze he pins Liam with should be convincing enough. 

 

“I do,” the man (boy?) is thrusting a fifty onto the bar before Louis can say much else. Nick is nowhere to be found, and he isn’t trying to molest Louis anymore, so he doesn’t worry about it. Nick is always around. There’s no point dwelling on it when he isn’t immediately present. 

 

“You _don’t.”_ Louis grabs the money and presses it back into the large hand that has been resting beside his on the bar. “I’ve got—”

 

“Let’s make a deal,” the man has grabbed a hold of Louis’ hand, stilled its progress. 

 

Louis looks up at him. He doesn’t look like a serial killer or a rapist. His own relationship history disproves that theory almost entirely: he’s likely addicted to something or held captive by his reliance on something. Louis is always going for the bad boys, the drugged out boys, the boys that reminded him of his mom. This boy, with his dimples and the flickering of his dark eyelashes, does not scare Louis. He seems harmless, approachable, in a way that Louis doesn’t normally go for. Crossing his arms over his chest, Louis nods.

 

“You can pay for the drinks if you’ll dance with me.” 

 

“Why would I do that?” 

 

Curly doesn’t flinch or hesitate, “Because I’ve been trying to buy you a drink for three weeks.” 

 

Louis’ eyes widen. Men trying to buy him drinks isn’t new. He doesn’t really think about it anymore, just accepts the drinks with a smile at whatever sheepish server has been sent for the errand. This boy, curls and eyes and pale skin and a _mesh black sweater,_ has just admitted to it to his face. That takes balls. Louis smiles, small and disarmed, before he nods.

 

 _Harry_ is his name, and he’s got huge hands that settle onto Louis’ hips carefully over his too tight jeans. They grind close and dirty, Harry’s abs flexing against Louis’ back as he swivels his hips. He’s got tattoos laced up and down his arms. Louis wants to lick them. He’s never been courted before, even if it _is_ just drinks, and Harry doesn’t grab his cock, doesn’t thrust against his bum like he’s trying to test how good a fuck Louis is right on the dance floor. When Louis gets brave enough to put his hands on the nape of Harry’s neck, Harry goes boneless, nuzzling his nose into the juncture of Louis’ neck and shoulder, sighing out little, broken, shivery noises. Louis goes pliant for him too. 

 

When the music slows to something with a beat that drags, sexy and low, Harry spins him around. His eyes are green: like sage, like the sherbet green of dawn. Louis wraps his arms around Harry’s neck again, and his eyes fall closed, his lips parting on a noise that the music is too loud to hear. Louis wants to be closer, wants to _hear_ him, but it’s impossible in the music. 

 

Louis makes a small, impatient noise, that ends with Harry’s leg between his, Harry’s face nestled in the juncture of his shoulder and neck. There is something electric about them together. Harry is possibly the most beautiful boy that Louis has ever seen with his broad shoulders and his small waist and his _legs_ in skinny jeans, and he hasn’t tried to force Louis into anything yet. He’s a gentleman, maybe, the last one left in the south side of Chicago. 

 

They grind through another song, legs tangled, breathing each other’s air, before Harry nuzzles into the space behind his ear. Louis goes pliant in his arms. The kisses that Harry lays over the skin are so soft, leave him weak kneed.

 

“Will you come home with me?” 

 

Louis laughs at that, head tossed back to expose his throat, “So gentlemanly.” 

 

Harry scowls. Holding Louis’ gaze, he tightens his grip until it’s demanding, could leave bruises, says, “Come home with me.” 

 

Louis hasn’t touched his cock. He’s done nothing more than watch the way electric lights play over this boy’s face and watched as this boy got him out of trouble with Nick. Watching the open, earnest look flash quickly across Harry’s face, Louis thinks that, really, all he knows about Harry is that he’s been wanting this for three weeks, and he hasn’t resorted to anything drastic yet. It’s the first time in a long time that Louis doesn’t second guess himself when he breathes out, “Yeah.” 

 

When they stumble into Louis’ house, Harry doesn’t look around, doesn’t say anything about how it looks. Louis can’t help the way he flashes back to Nick’s mumbled _the fuck is this?_ That could be because they’re already desperately scrabbling at each other’s clothes, but. Technicalities.

 

Louis’ brain doesn’t have room for those at the moment. 

 

They careen into the kitchen, crashing into the cabinets as Harry fucks his tongue in and out of Louis’ mouth, and Louis frantically holds onto his hips to keep him in place enough to suck on it. Harry makes all of these low, moaning sounds that fade into the night. Everything about him is intoxicating: his huge hands gripping Louis’ bum, his knee knocking into the counter when he slides his leg between Louis’, his lips working feverishly down Louis’ neck as he pants out, “Wanna fuck you so bad.” 

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Louis’ own fingers are trembling around Harry’s belt buckle, fighting to lower it in the dim light coming from over the sink. He should _shush_ Harry, because he’s got seven siblings sleeping upstairs in preparation for school in the morning. Instead, Louis fits his hand down the front of Harry’s pants and rubs against the hardened cock he finds there. 

 

They rut like teenagers who’ve just discovered what sex is: Harry can’t stop palming his bum and slipping his fingers into Louis’ crack to press on his hole, the front of his briefs dampening. He’s got a wet cock. Louis wants to suck him down so far he chokes, wants to put that knowledge somewhere safe for the nights when he feels especially cold and unworthy. _This beautiful boy got wet for me._

 

Harry picks him up and sets him on the counter, shedding his shirt and jacket with stumbling, flailing fingers as Louis peels off his own shirt and yanks his suspenders off, metal clasps clanking loudly as they fall to the floor. He’s at a time in his life when touching people has begun to make him feel deeply sad, and Harry’s coming back into the triangle of his legs, is kissing him so softly, that Louis shouldn’t be sad.

 

Sometimes, Jesy hugs him, and he wants to sob. 

 

Fingers teasing under the back of his jeans, Louis arches forward, pressing into the warmth, the Burberry scented shelter of Harry’s neck and shoulder. His teeth work into the skin there while Harry pushes down his own pants, rucks Louis’ pants and briefs to the side to get their cocks out.

 

It should concern him: how soft their touches have gotten. Harry’s almost angelic, against the golden, bare glow of the light over the kitchen sink, and Louis just touches his collarbones, his shoulders, marvels at the architecture of his anatomy. Calloused fingers, huge hands wrapping around their cocks, jolt Louis from his staring. Neither of them can do much more than rut forward and pant into the air between them and it’s over before Louis wants it to be. 

 

The first time is fast, frantic. The second time, Harry eats him out over the kitchen table slowly before tucking his thumbs up into Louis’ body and fucking into the space he’s created. Then, a third time, in the shadows of Louis’ bedroom against the worn, dark blue sheets, Harry lined up against his back, cock so deep in Louis that they aren’t two people anymore. 

 

When they finally manage to curl up, Harry plasters himself along Louis’ back, nosing up into the sweaty hair there. It’s silent, just their breathing synched up, intimate in a way that Louis doesn’t know what to do with. He closes his eyes and revels in it. 

 

**

 

Fizzy’s tiny fingers are digging into Louis’ arm too harshly for the amount of sleep that he got. He rolls over, attempting to do so without upsetting the warmth of Harry’s hold, and opens his eyes to gaze at her.

 

Corn silk blond hair rucked up in a halo around her face, too short pajama pants, the handlebars of her collarbones. Louis is always so amazed by his sisters’ fragile beauty. She’s looking down at her feet, scuffing them over the scarred floors in the too bright light of dawn.

 

“What’s up, buttercup?” Louis rasps.

 

Her smile is unsure when she says, “Jay’s in the kitchen.” 

 

It jolts Louis as effectively as anything in his life ever has. He feels sore in places that he hasn’t for a long time, and while he would love to roll over and languish in this feeling for a brief moment, he doesn’t have the time. He breathes out, hefting himself up, careful of the large palm slipping off his back and curling into the sheets. There is never anything to be done to prepare himself for a confrontation with his mom and whatever state her bipolar disorder is in. Louis just prays and prays to a god who’s never listened that she hasn’t stolen anything. 

 

Fizzy looks up at him with wide eyes, “Are you mad?” 

 

“No, love,” Louis whispers, “Not at all. Please get ready for school, alright?” 

 

Even as he tugs on a pair of sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt, Louis knows that this is going to ruin all of his plans for the coming day. There’s never any telling how long Jay will linger and what she’ll take, both literally and metaphorically. What does he do with Harry? For a few seconds, Louis watches the even rise and fall of Harry’s back, his ribs thrown in and out of relief. Whatever the correct etiquette is, Louis can only hope he hasn’t messed up too badly when he walks out of his bedroom and closes the door softly behind him. 

 

Gone are all of his hazy, warm thoughts of last night, the incredulous feeling he gets when he looks at Harry. Taking in the battered state of the floors and the walls, all of the kids’ toys scattered in disarray only hardens Louis’ resolve as he pads down the stairs. 

 

Jay is, as Fizzy said, in the kitchen. She’s perched at the breakfast counter with her hands around a mug of coffee, toast laying on the plate in front of her, lips pouted slightly as she trails a finger around the rim of her mug. Every time Louis sees her she looks older in a way that is startling and chilling. Louis would say something kind to her if he even knew what he was meant to be saying.

 

“What’re you doing here?” 

 

Her head whips up too quickly. It’s a manic phase. Louis can read it in her brilliantly sparkling eyes and the pleased curl of her mouth like she doesn’t remember _leaving_ them. 

 

“I came back, Lou, I want to stay here for a while. I can help with the—”

 

A thump from upstairs prompts Louis into saying, “You can’t help with anything.” 

 

There are seven kids upstairs who rely on Louis for parenting. If Jay had done her _job,_ if Jay had been stronger or smarter, than that wouldn’t be the case. He crosses his arms over his chest, thinking about the hours he spent researching _manic depression, bipolar disorder,_ millions of google pages flashing behind his eyes and leaving him dizzy. Louis won’t let her get past him into the living room, past him and up the stairs so she can see her children. Jay doesn’t deserve to see her children, and it could be the rush of wanting Harry to stay or how unmoored that has made him feel, but Louis is shaking his head even as Jay continues to make empty, selfish promises about _better_ and _not drinking, not doing drugs, not not not_. 

 

“Leave.” 

 

In the cramped, dirty kitchen of a house that has never belonged to her, Jay opens her mouth, closes it, gapes at Louis in the morning light.

 

“I said,” Louis leans against the door jamb, “ _leave.”_

 

“You can’t make me.” 

 

It’s _so_ childish, so petulant, so fucking _inadequate._ The anger rising in Louis’ chest is not only on his own behalf. He is angry for Lottie and Fizzy and Daisy and Phoebe and Doris and Ernest. “I’ve called the police on you before.” 

 

“You wouldn’t—” her bloodshot eyes widen.

 

“I would.” Louis affirms. He’s proud of himself, of the way his voice remains steady. “I will.” 

 

Jay’s scrabbling now: her hands are frantic as they move across the counter, her eyes travel around the living room, around the kitchen, everything about her uncertain, “I want to see the—”

 

“Do you know what day it is?” 

 

“It’s a Saturday.” 

 

“It’s Friday,” Louis walks further into the kitchen, still keeping himself between her and the only route she can take to her kids. “Jay, _leave.”_

 

“I can hear them up there,” she points. 

 

Louis used to pity her. She would come home with dirty hair and bags under her eyes from dragging Dan home from the bar, and Louis would have coffee ready. They would sit on the kitchen floor and pray that he didn’t get violent, that he didn’t wake up drowning in a pool of his own vomit. Jay always promised to take them away from here. It’s not betrayal that he feels, because he never believed her. It’s pain, pure and simple and strong, thrumming in his chest. 

 

“I can hear them too,” Louis nods at her like she’s five. 

 

“Please—”

 

“ _Leave,”_ he says. The cell phone in the pocket of his sweatpants is not his. Harry’d slid these on, sometime after three, when he’d fucked Louis lying down, back to front, so deep and so good, “Please fucking _leave,_ Jay. They don’t need to see you.” 

 

“I’m your mom!” Her voice is wavering, her eyes glassy. For all of the time that she’s spent away from this house, it still carries her voice so well. Louis doesn’t want anyone else to know that she’s here, doesn’t want to have to deal with their questions. He’s selfish, maybe, or practical or _tired._

 

Louis is getting ready to say something horrible. Being someone’s mother is more than a title or a position to be filled at one’s convenience. He’s going to say that too, is winding up to it, when a warm hand settles into the center of his back.

 

“Who the fuck’re you?” 

 

Harry smells like faded Burberry and sleep. He doesn’t kiss Louis’ temple, doesn’t do anything but say, “Louis asked you to leave.” 

 

“Who the _fuck_ are you?” Jay’s voice has begun to climb hysterically in the way that Louis _knows_ leads to yelling and bringing the house down and missing a day of school while the kids recover. “What the fuck are you—”

 

“One,” Harry holds up a single finger, “Language. There are kids here. Two,” another finger, and Louis had those fingers in his _bum_ not three hours ago, “Louis asked you to fuck off. So I’d suggest you do so.” 

 

Jay’s darting these caged animal looks between Louis and Harry, like she expects him to intervene. When Nick punched Louis in the mouth, Louis expected Jay to say something. When Jay walked in on Dan with his hand around Louis’ throat, Louis expected Jay to say something, to kick him out. She stayed silent. Louis’ decision is simple.

 

“I’ve got the police on speed dial,” Harry confidently reaches into the pocket of Louis’ sweats, “and I know how to get them here faster than you can leave.” 

 

Louis expects Jay to act out. The plate that she hurls across the kitchen smashes into the wall, adding another decorative mark to the bunch. He’s trying to tug out of Harry’s grip before he can think about it. She _can’t_ get violent with the kids here, that isn’t an option— Harry flinches at his side, and then he’s across the kitchen with a hand around Jay’s upper arm. Everything in Louis has narrowed: Jay trying to squirm away, her threatening to bite, her clawing nails, her ferocious anger, Harry’s calm breathing, his steady grip.

 

The door closing in her wake. 

 

The franticness of seven kids getting ready for school with this new, stranger in their midst. 

 

Fizzy’s tremulous, “Where did mom go?” 

 

Louis’ equally tremulous, “She didn’t want to stay, Fizz.” 

 

It’s after all of the girls have left that Louis actually processes what’s happened. Work should be called, maybe even Jesy, so he can at least fake a sick day or something. Leaning against the counter of the kitchen with a mug of coffee in his hands, Louis doesn’t have the energy for any of that. 

 

Every time Jay comes back around there’s a gulf that opens in his chest: he is his mother’s son, and he does love her. He loves her so much he let her stay even when she couldn’t haul herself out of bed for a week straight because Dan, the abusive asshole, had fucked up everything and killed himself. Louis hates her just as much. She didn’t have to leave. There are meds now, so many meds. He’s spent nights on webmd just trying to figure out what was _wrong_ with her, mornings spent calling around to free clinics to see who could fill a prescription for the least money. 

 

Harry, leaning against the counter across from him, startles him out of his thoughts. He’s careful with Louis: looks at his eyes and his mouth and the red marks dotted on his neck for a long time before he dares to step closer.

 

“Wanna talk about it?” 

 

Louis wants to apologize or something. Something _adequate._ The only sound that spills out of his mouth is a broken, exhausted cry of frustration. No one is ever here in the aftermath of these things. He doesn’t know if there’s such a thing as survivor’s guilt or if he has any right to be feeling it. 

 

Harry’s arms come around his body in the near silence of the old house. He’s got huge palms that he spreads across the divot of Louis’ lower back with a sort of calming, hushing sound that Louis recognizes from trying to get Doris and Ernest to sleep. Other people would press him for information, for answers. Harry just tucks his head on top of Louis and breathes with him for a long time. 

 

When they pull back, Harry kisses at the bone of his wrist for a long moment. His lips are soft, plush, rest against Louis’ skin like he’s taking a heartbeat, his eyelashes curved like the bottom of the moon against his cheekbones. The hushed _you are the strongest boy I’ve ever met_ he breathes into Louis’ open mouth. It isn’t until much later that Louis will realize that she got the squirrel fund hidden on the topmost shelf. 

 

Against all odds, Harry stays. 

 

**

 

“Go on a date with me,” Harry whispers later that day. They’re in the shower together, dizzy with the taste of soap and skin, “Please. A real one.” 

 

“Why would I do that?” Louis is going to say yes. He just likes to watch the way that Harry furrows his eyes and feel the almost absent way he touches Louis’ skin, whether for comfort or because he wants to.

 

Harry leans down to his ear, a hand caught around the nape of his neck, “I remember what you were wearing the first night I saw you.” 

 

The shudder that ripples up Louis’ spine makes him press more closely into Harry’s grasp. Arching his back, Louis makes a noncommittal, unimpressed sound that is ruined by the jackrabbiting of his heartbeat. Boys in the south side don’t care about impressing someone. They just want to fuck. 

 

“Suspenders,” Harry breathes, kissing at the spot behind his ear, “Black suspenders with white polka dots, white shirt, black pants.” 

 

That was three weeks ago. Louis’ fingers dig into his hips. 

 

“I’d never seen anyone so desirable.” 

 

**

 

“Tell me a secret, Harry Styles.” 

 

There are potentially a ton of secrets that Louis will never learn about this boy: how he’s managed to afford a Burberry shirt with fucking _hearts_ of all things, why he’s wearing that with ripped jeggings and scuffed boots, why his hair is held back by a jade green headscarf, how he can afford a Range Rover, who his parents are, where he goes to school, _if_ he goes to school—

 

Louis’ history with men is atrocious. They’re all addicted to something, just as much as Louis is addicted to boys who will treat him like shit and fuck him hard. None the less, Harry is seated across from him in some posh, Italian restaurant with his hands folded over the napkin in his lap and his jade green eyes focused on Louis’ mouth.

 

“Like what?” His boots catch around Louis’ ankle under the table and hold, sending sparks between their skin. He’s playing coy, in a way that is adorable and frustrating, makes Louis want to pin his hips down and suck bruises into his thighs until he’s _begging_. 

 

Louis wants to know so many things about him. Like what’s his favorite band and what’s his favorite make of car and how does he take his coffee and—

 

Harry licks his lips before he catches the waitresses’ eye and nods.

 

“Are you a secret agent?” Louis asks before he can stop himself.

 

The small, delighted smile on Harry’s face is not an answer. The fifty he slips into the waitresses’ hand is not an answer. The key she slips into Harry’s hand is _definitely_ not an answer. 

 

Harry’s gaze is intent when he looks back up at Louis. Across their stretch of cozy, candlelit table and expensive wine, Harry is pretty and earnest, something sharper hidden in his smile. Louis has no reason not to follow this boy to the ends of the earth. He stayed when Jay smashed into their morning, he promised Louis’ siblings Starbucks tomorrow. 

 

When Harry murmurs, “Do you trust me, Lou,” his nickname shivers up Louis’ spine and settles in a blush on his cheeks. 

 

Louis is terrified of how much he wants. 

 

“Are you going to kill me?” is what stumbles onto the table between them. There is a scary, half tilted moment when Louis is seriously concerned that he’s seriously offended Harry.

 

Then, head thrown back in a laugh, Harry says, “No.” 

 

“Are you a drug addict? Or a dealer?” 

 

Harry’s smiling, open and honest, “No. I smoked up once and threw up. Not for me.” 

 

Louis tucks that information away for later. Mentally tells Georgia to dispose of her pot. 

 

“Are you an alcoholic?” 

 

Shaking his head again, “You know the “seven drunk people you meet at parties” or whatever?” 

 

Louis nods. Everyone has heard about that stupid thing or clicked on the link on their homepage for laughs.

 

Harry leans across the table, “I am sometimes the philosophical drunk. Sometimes, I get sad. Sometimes, I act like I’m crunk,” he makes a funny face, a sort of flattened smile and a somber nod, “I try not to tempt fate.” 

 

“Are you sure you’re _real?”_

 

“Who’ve you _dated_?” Harry shoots back. 

 

They sit there in the near silence of the private dining room at some expensive Italian restaurant for almost a full minute. Louis is watching him for tells: looking up and to the left or fidgeting, anything. Harry just gazes evenly back, fingers moving rhythmically over the keys. He could be truthful to Harry’s question, but he has a feeling that Harry _knows_ just by seeing the way Nick treated him. 

 

Finally, when Louis has settled on the truth, Harry whispers, “There’s one thing.” 

 

Heart beating hard against his ribcage, Louis breathes, “What?” 

 

Harry grins, small and impish, before he says, “I may not, strictly speaking, _own_ the cars I drive.” 

 

His mind goes rushing: does Harry borrow them from people? Are they his parents’? Are they his sister’s? Does she steal them? His mouth must be hanging open, because Harry laughs, pressing a wide, impossibly large hand to the dinner table as he stands up. 

 

“This one’s a Mercedes, but,” he shrugs, “Still not mine.” 

 

“Who’s is it?” Louis remains firmly seated, looking up at the heart shirt and the skinny jeans and wondering when this boy mustered up enough malicious intent to hurt him, “Harry—”

 

“I _may,”_ Harry leans down to his ear, “Steal cars and sell them for a living.” 

 

The lights are, like Lady in the Tramp, lowered enough that Harry’s eyes are the only luminous thing in his face. He’s smiling, soft, watching Louis react with a hand on the table and a hand around a set of keys to a— a Mercedes. It’s definitely not the worst thing that anyone has ever told Louis. No alcohol or drugs are involved, and Harry seems to _know._ He’s not just stealing cars because he wants to or because it’s cool or whatever.

 

Louis is rising and clasping his hand without glancing back at the unpaid tab they’ve left on the table. 

 

Harry just watches him, allows him to breathe. 

 

“Lead the way.” 

 

As it turns out, the Mercedes is a beautiful car: white, vintage, entirely out of place in this part of Chicago. Louis reclines beside Harry in the front seat and watches the city lights dance over his face: he’s got such a pouty mouth, lips like opening flower petals, and the flashing of his eyelashes over his cheeks are all jagged edges as he drives between buildings in the city. He’s talking about something, animated, and Louis just lets his voice fall away into the hum of the engine and the heated seats, the tricked out interior despite the car being so old. There is a certain spark to Harry’s expression, the wide expanse of his palm curled over Louis’ thigh and gripped tight, and Louis feels safe and alive and _okay._ He isn’t drunk or high or in danger. He hasn’t checked his cell phone all night for texts from his siblings and, really, that’s the most telling thing. 

 

Harry’s pinky sweeps over his inner thigh, up and up, and Louis imagines going to dinners in the city more frequently, imagines sitting beside Harry at parent teacher conferences, imagines Daisy and Phoebe and Fizzy and Lottie and Doris and Ernest snuggling up to Harry. Louis zones back in when Harry is talking about how much he loves kitties.

 

Louis just grins. 

 

**

 

Georgia obviously has no idea that Louis is in the doorway of her room, just having gotten in from his date. 

 

Her and Jade are lit up only by the moonlight falling in through the window, turning things a frosty shade of not quite white. They’re tangled, Georgia’s hand in Jade’s blue hair and on the bony cliff of her hipbone, Jade’s hand on Georgia’s thigh, thumb moving over the dip behind her knee, their lips working as silently as possible. 

 

It’s too late for Louis to pick a fight, to call her out. He yawns, closes the door a fraction more than it already was, and crawls into bed next to Harry. 

 

It feels like they’ve been sleeping for no time at all when Doris begins crying, shrill and angry sounding, which means that Ernest can’t possibly be far behind. Louis jolts slightly. He doesn’t want to upset Harry’s sprawled out form, but he has to knee off the bed and into the wavering lightness of the night light in the hall. Louis is as careful as he can be as he crawls off the bed. He’s fumbling around on the ground, fingers scrabbling for purchase on any kind of fabric to pull on over his boxers, when Harry stirs.

 

“Wha’s it?” 

 

Louis _shh’s_ him. It’s sometime after midnight, and everyone else is sleeping, getting ready for school tomorrow. Harry’s eyes are the only lighted thing in the room.

 

“’S just the babies,” Louis finally finds the sweats that Harry tossed on the floor to give Louis a blow job, “‘ve got it,” even to himself he sounds tired, slurred and fuzzy edged, words that have no real form. 

 

Harry’s out of the bed before he can tell him to stop, “Go back to bed.” Long, lean, pale in the barely there light of the hallway, Harry scratches at his stomach before putting a hand on the back of Louis’ head to kiss his temple, “Lou, go back to bed.” 

 

There isn’t enough space between Louis’ bed and closet for him to properly strong arm Harry out of going out the door. Harry hasn’t wasted time either, standing around searching for pants. His tall form opens the door slowly and lumbers tiredly down the hall, tattoos in stark relief against his pale skin. 

 

Louis takes off after him clad in only his boxers. Navigating the upper hallway is hard during the day. In the night, it’s nearly impossible to work around all of the fallen toys and backpacks propped against the walls, winter coats on the ground with mittens and hats. 

 

Harry emerges from the girls’ and the babies’ room with Doris tucked up against the juncture of his neck and throat, her small head against his heart as she hiccups weak sobs. His hands look enormous spread over the smallness of her back and side. Louis doesn’t say anything. He just walks up to his baby girl and puts a hand on her forehead to move the downy hair from her face. She’s lovely, all large, light eyes and the small button of her nose, her forehead crumpled with exertion.

 

“You’re so sweaty, Dori,” Louis murmurs to her, “Why’re you so sad?” 

 

She nuzzles against Harry’s pec. 

 

Harry’s lips make no noise when he presses them to the crown of her head, “Go to sleep, baby girl.” 

 

There are so many things that could’ve done Louis in: Harry’s kindness or his love or the way that Harry interacts with his siblings. In the end, it’s this. Harry kissing Doris’ head, his huge hands spread over her body protectively, the two of them huddled together in the dark hallway, whispering sweet words to a quietly whimpering girl, and the way that Harry touches the nape of his neck so gently when they kiss before they go back to bed. 

 

**

 

“Does that happen a lot?” 

 

Louis turns his face into the pillow. It smells like Harry, who has been using the girls’ shampoo and sex. He doesn’t want to answer that question. Just because a day has passed doesn’t mean that he feels any less fragile about what happened with Jay. Does his past rear its ugly head often? Yes. Does it always take the form of Jay? No. Does Louis tell him now and wait for him to run? 

 

Harry’s fingers skim down his spine before settling in the center of his lower back. Goosebumps raise in his wake. 

 

“I’m not— Like. I’m not afraid of her.” Harry begins, “I just—”

 

“It’s not always Jay,” Louis murmurs. It’s indistinct, muffled by the pillow under his head. If it was Stan, he could just turn over and choke himself on Stan’s cock. That always worked as a distraction. “My family is pretty fucked up.” 

 

Harry makes a gentle, chiding sound, “Mine too.” 

 

“Not as bad as mine.” 

 

“Is it a contest now?” Harry sounds bemused, which Louis doesn’t examine, “My sister’s name is Gemma. She was arrested at twenty one for possession of heroine and has been to rehab enough times that I don’t keep track anymore. I must accept the things I can’t change or whatever the hell that prayer is.” 

 

Louis smiles against his will. The way that Harry talks about his family isn’t mean, necessarily. It’s resigned. Louis understands that.

 

“My mom and dad got divorced when I was leaving for college,” his laughter sounds more like choking, his fingers drumming across Louis’ back, “My mom thinks she’s a fucking _martyr._ Won’t let me forget how much she went thru for me.” 

 

At that, Louis turns to face him. Harry is the picture of ease: facing Louis, eyes closed, lips parted as he speaks, forehead creased. Louis can tell though, can read the tension in his shoulders and in the way he drums across Louis’ back. There is a sort of comfort in realizing that other people have messy families too. His fingers tremble but he touches at Harry’s cheekbone.

 

“I don’t really talk to my dad anymore,” is the next thing Harry says, “Because he doesn’t approve of my life choices, like I need his _approval_ to steal cars.” 

 

“Don’t you?” Louis murmurs. The look that settles onto his face is fond, even he can feel that. He’s got Jay’s heart, her traitor heart, tripping over itself and into someone else’s hands all the time. Harry doesn’t seem like a horrible option, after the last three days. He’s the nicest thief that Louis has ever met. 

 

“I just need to not get caught.” 

 

Louis laughs into the pillow. Harry’s eyes remain closed, serene and quiet as he breathes. Louis sighs and squirms around a bit, trying to think of what he could possibly say to Harry to explain what’s happened in his life. 

 

“My dad left,” Louis whispers, “I was eleven days old. So. Abandonment issues are my speciality.” 

 

Harry’s green eyes blink open.

 

“My stepdad left too, and my mom went— She’s always had mental health problems, but her bipolar disorder almost killed her, after Dan—” _killed himself, drank himself dumb and killed himself, “_ after he left her.” 

 

“Lou.” 

 

“I’m raising my siblings alone, mostly, working minimum wage jobs and, like,” Louis shakes his head, frustrated and lost and _angry,_ all over again, at his life, hoping that if he can just say it all it won’t sound as bad, “Hoping CPS doesn’t show up on our doorstep.” 

 

Harry’s fingers still on his back.

 

“To answer your question, it’s not always my mom. I dated a gun dealer who likes to show up, every once in a while, to remind me of my days in the closet. It’s him, sometimes.” 

 

It’s Louis’ turn to close his eyes. No one else has been told so directly. Usually, his life reveals itself in fits and bursts of tragedy and fear and horror and tears. Harry has got it all now, and he can choose to leave. Hands clenching in the off white sheets on his bed, Louis waits for the warmth of Harry’s hands to leave his back.

 

He doesn’t. Harry scoots closer, up to his arm, and whispers, “How can you be so strong?” 

 

Louis laughs, something wet and embarrassed. Harry has known him for three days and already managed to strip him entirely bare.

 

“I’m not,” he murmurs, opening his eyes. They’re so close, so warm, so caught in their own world. 

 

Harry kisses him, again and again, here and here and here, and Louis melts into it. 

 

**

 

“Mr. Tomlinson?” 

 

Louis presses the phone more firmly to his ear, taking a drag off his cigarette. The night air bites at his ankles and at his wrists.

 

“Yes?” 

 

“You’ve been let go,” the woman says quietly, calmly, “You can come collect your things from your desk tomorrow, but we’ve had to make some budget cuts—”

 

Rules of etiquette would urge Louis to stay on the line and hear out what this person has to say. Rules of the south side of Chicago demand something a bit stronger. This isn’t the first time, and it isn’t the last time, and Louis doesn’t have time to worry about it all. 

 

**

 

Later that night, Georgia tilts her head back against the railing, exhaling a long stream of smoke back into the air, “What the fuck are you gonna do about it?” 

 

He shrugs. Of all of his siblings, Georgia is the best at holding him accountable for the shitty decisions he’s so fond of making when he trips falls _throws_ himself into a new relationship. The grass is dying, the night is burning out in oranges and pinks, the edges of things looking singed like a burned photograph, sharp and dark. 

 

“Not sure,” he says, just incase she didn’t get the shrug. 

 

“I’ll make money,” she flickers the butt of her cigarette somewhere far from the end of the porch, tugging her long, dark hair into a knot that she secures with a broken piece of the fence, “but you’ve got to—”

 

“I know, G.” 

 

Louis looks at her. Her squinted eyes and her bony shoulders and the hardness of her entire stance. 

 

“I’ve been keeping this family afloat—”

 

“Don’t play the martyr, Lou,” he’s never known how Georgia managed to perfect their mother’s look of disdain so well, “It’s not a good look.” 

 

“Why are you attacking me?” Self consciously, anxious to preserve the small amount of comfort that Harry’s clothes provide, Louis tugs the green suede coat he’s got slung over his shoulders more tightly around himself. The night is ending, everything is ending, Louis doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with any of this. He shouldn’t feel betrayed by Georgia’s inability to talk about Jade, “Can’t you just be grateful?” 

 

Georgia snorts, “The plethora of adult support I’ve received in my lifetime has made me truly awestruck with _gratitude.”_

 

“Georgia—”

 

“I’m going to Jade’s, alright?” Her eyes meet his without going soft or kind. She’s got her arms tucked up in her beat up leather jacket, a ratty sweater clinging just barely to the slope of her breasts, “Don’t wait up.” 

 

Louis bites his tongue against the _I saw you kissing her, I saw you together in bed, I know,_ choosing instead to watch as Georgia’s silhouette fades out on the pavement, her new cigarette sending smoke spiraling up into the fall air. She’s stubborn and irrational and drives Louis _nuts_ more often than not. She’s also the only person who’s helped Louis when he feels the absolute worst, when he feels like he needs a minute to just breathe or he’s going to die. 

 

He needs to take a deep breath before he can go back into the kitchen and help Harry with dinner. They can cook silently, Louis’ discovered, moving around each other seamlessly. It’s a welcome kind of domesticity, instead of the almost franticness of having to come up with meals and make sure that all of the ingredients are present all by himself. They make pasta tonight: Harry makes a salad while Louis boils water and mixes a prepackaged sauce in the pan. Louis is zoning off, watching tomatoes and herbs swirl, when Harry begins to speak. 

 

“My mom is…” Harry trails off, shrugging even while he continues to cut lettuce, “She guilty parents me, I think.” 

 

Louis looks up from the pot of sauce he’s stirring. He’s wearing a ratty sweatshirt with holes in the hood, and Harry’s got on an old shirt of his that’s too tight, wraps around his biceps and pecs. They’ve moved seamlessly into this kind of sharing. 

 

“What do you mean?” Louis leans back against the counter by the sink, arms tucked up to his chest to preserve warmth. 

 

Harry just shrugs again, “She’s not a _bad_ parent.” 

 

“I never said she was.” 

 

“She just feels bad, I think, about my dad and about how he handled the gay thing and—”

 

“’The gay thing’?” He’s from south side Chicago. Louis knows about all kinds of things: alcohol and drug and abuse, both mental and physical, and gay things. He wasn’t sure how it was on the north side, wasn’t sure if a rich boy could have enough money to cushion himself from the ‘gay thing.’ “I thought—”

 

“The ‘walked in on you with a cock up your ass’ thing, yeah,” Harry stares down hard at the bowl where he’s tossed all of the lettuce. He’s not an angry person, Louis knows that, knows that he isn’t a bad person or a vicious person. Still, Harry looks like whatever happened with his dad was seriously horrible. 

 

“I’m so—”

 

“I think dropping out of med school was more disappointing to them.” 

 

“You were a—” Louis stops for a moment to stare at the contours of Harry’s back. “You dropped out of med school?” 

 

Harry shrugs, “I decided that being a doctor wasn’t right for me.” 

 

“Okay,” Louis has no right to judge anyone’s life decisions, and he doesn’t. Harry _went_ to college. He had intent. Just… failed a bit, at the follow thru. He’s turning back to his saucepan, waiting for Harry to look away, “What?” 

 

“You aren’t going to, like, yell at me?” 

 

“No.” 

 

“Tell me I’m a waste of time or space?” 

 

Louis shrugs, “You’ve got a nice cock.” 

 

It’s not the most appropriate thing to say, maybe, but Harry is smiling and humming to himself again, and Louis turns back to his pasta sauce with a smile on his face.

 

**

 

“You realize that all of this will get stolen, right?” 

 

Louis’ rifling through Harry’s closet. He’s got so much Burberry and YSL and American Apparel, all of these soft, used feeling fabrics that Harry’s probably never even worn. Boots rest along the floor and on the far side of his closet, an entire shelf devoted to what looks like winter coats. They _do_ live in Chicago. 

 

Harry’s leaned back on his big, industrial framed bed, white sheets puddled around his feet, “ _Heeeey.”_

 

After four days spent pretty exclusively at Louis’ house, Harry decided that he needed some of his own clothes. Louis came with because, although he has no reason to, there is still a part of himself that doubts that Harry will ever come back. He feels shabby amongst all of these beautiful clothes that he’ll _never_ be rich enough to afford, in this industrial apartment furnished in leather and chrome. Harry looks at home amongst this luxury, just as at home as he looks at Louis’ house with the scarred floors and the color marks on the wall and the poster in the hallway that proclaims _don’t make me release the flying monkeys._

 

His fingers find a series of plaid shirts: blue and white, black and white, ridiculous hawaiian flowers that Louis is baffled to see belong to _Burberry,_ red and blue,and something that looks mysteriously like it popped out of a vintage Mario game, all so heavy and warm. Louis rubs one against his face, just to see how it feels. Everything smells like the woodsy, clean scent that Harry carries around.

 

“You can take that,” Harry’s voice is gravely, “if you want.” 

 

Louis shrugs, “It’s yours.” It shouldn’t matter, because it’s a shirt. What matters is how willing he was to give it to Louis, despite how badly things could go between them, despite how long they’ve known each other.

 

“It’d look good on you.” 

 

There are long moments where Louis waits for the punch line, waits for Harry to demand a response. He doesn’t. Feeling dangerous, like he’s careening, Louis shrugs off his ratty white Henley. No noise from behind him. Then, he shimmies out of the skinny jeans he’s been wearing, sighing as they fall to the floor. Harry and him are alone. No siblings, no parents, no phones or computers or shitty ex boyfriends. He wouldn’t have dared do this for Nick or for Stan. It’s vulnerability, the art of putting himself in the position to be rejected.

 

The flannel he chooses is blue and white, _Ralph Lauren_ written proudly across the label. The same color as his eyes and too big on him, but he pushes his arms through the arm holes and turns to face Harry. 

 

Harry is leaned up on his elbows, eyes lit only along the bottom by the lamp beside his bed. 

 

Louis bites his lip and gazes down at his feet. 

 

“C’mere,” is what Harry says. 

 

Never having walked a tightrope before, Louis can’t quite compare padding across the bedroom to Harry’s large, white sheets to that feeling, but it _is._ It feels like perching on the highest bar of the jungle gym and asking the person below to catch him. He’s trembling, praying that Harry can’t tell. The person who was brave enough to put this shirt on is not the same person who is brave enough to be vulnerable in it. 

 

Louis’ thighs bump into the edge of the bed, and then Harry’s hands are settling on his waist under the shirt, his lips finding the juncture of Louis’ throat and neck, marking up already marked skin. 

 

“Knew it’d look good on you,” Harry murmurs, “ _Knew it.”_

 

The blush that creeps up his chest makes the air between them even warmer, “Nobody likes a know it all.” 

 

Harry’s long fingers fit to the press of his cock against the front of his briefs and rub insistently, “Really?” 

 

“Really,” Louis says, breathless and caught out in his lie, “There was this girl in my Chem class. Good god. I wanted to—” Louis loops his arms around Harry’s neck to run his fingers through the matted curls at the back of his head, “I wanted to _kill_ her.” 

 

“Violent,” Harry comments. He’s offhand, even with the teasing finger he’s snuck into the opening at the front of Louis’ briefs, even as he kisses across Louis’ collarbone and nuzzles into the place where his armpit meets his torso, “So violent for such a tiny boy.” 

 

“ _Heeey,”_ he’s gone weak kneed, held up entirely by the strong arm that Harry has looped around his back, “Stop being a shit.” 

 

“Stop _seducing_ me,” Harry murmurs, kissing at the thin skin of his inner arm, “Use your seductive powers for good,” he pleads.

 

Louis tugs on his hair as he laughs, “Never.” 

 

Harry lifts up his head. Green eyes squinted up in a smile, he says, “Promise?” 

 

**

 

It’s baffling to Louis, how easily Harry fits into his life. There is no struggle. There is no compromise. He gets Starbucks for Louis’ siblings and helps wake them up and get them to school. Harry even, much to Louis’ own bafflement, seems to genuinely care for his siblings. For a couple of days, they exist in a sort of stasis. 

 

Harry leaves after the kids leave for school to go steal cars. Louis and the babies hang out at home, occasionally following leads on certain jobs, occasionally calling people to see if anything has freed up. Louis cleans the house, finds lesbian porn under Georgia’s bed and sits down to take a couple of deep breaths before putting it back. He remembers that all too well. 

 

The club promises more regular shifts in the very near future, and Louis allows himself to enjoy the kind of boring that other people take for granted in their lives. 

 

**

 

When the club hasn’t pulled thru two days later, Louis decides it’s time to go to Jesy: 

 

“Jess— _Fuck.”_

 

As usual, Louis has chosen the worst time to visit Jesy and Zayn. Jesy turns around and rolls her eyes. Louis just gapes: Zayn is bent over the back of the couch, hands tied behind his back, cock rubbing into the leather, wet and slow, Jesy pegging him. He’s known them for so long, knows so much about their couple dynamic, the way they work.

 

It doesn’t surprise him. It’s the way that Zayn whimpers, small and wounded, that makes Louis retreat into the kitchen in desperate search of a glass of water. He tries to ignore the sounds of Jesy and Zayn finishing up. They’re filming today for their web show. He _knew_ that. Sometimes, Louis thinks that he’s selfish, that he puts himself before— 

 

“If you don’t stop thinking, I’ll peg you too,” Jesy breezes into the kitchen in her black silk kimono before grabbing a water bottle from the fridge, “Sit at the fucking table, will you? Good god. So many useless men today.” 

 

Then, she’s gone again, tucking Zayn into the couch and kissing him, whispering something low that Louis isn’t privy to hearing.

 

“Alright,” Jesy turns back around to face him, framed by her black leather couch and the cheetah print blanket that Zayn’s snuggled down into, “What’re you doing here, love?” 

 

With her hands on her hips and the very recent memory of her balls deep in Zayn, Louis isn’t quite sure what to say. He’s overwhelmed by everything: his lack of job, Harry’s constant support, the never ending onslaught of taking care of his siblings. He’s dropping his head onto the table before he’s even thought about it.

 

“Louis, I love you, y’know that, but I’m already doing aftercare for one person, so if you don’t mind—”

 

“Harry’s not leaving, and I don’t have a job, and I just want to sleep sometimes—”

 

Jesy laughs, sitting back on the couch when it’s clear that Louis isn’t dying, a hand carding through the thick, downy hair on the top of Zayn’s head. He’s curled up on the couch, nearly on her lap, tucking himself as near to her warmth as he can get, all slow blinks and bitten lips. 

 

“Overwhelmed much?” 

 

Louis makes an aborted sound in the back of his throat. 

 

“Listen to me, alright?” Jesy murmurs. She’s gentle, and Louis knows why she’s so good at aftercare when she goes things like this, “Pick your balls up off the floor, and go home, Lou. Stop waiting for Harry to fuck off, and be thankful that he hasn’t. Stop worrying about the job situation. It’ll work itself out, and if it doesn’t, we’re all here to help. You know that. I love you very, very much, but,” Zayn nuzzles into the golden skin of her thigh, mouthing at the tattoo there, “I need to take care of this big baby.” 

 

Zayn’s grin is all sharp white teeth and indulgence.

 

“Love you, Lou,” he murmurs. 

 

Louis can’t stand them. 

 

**

 

He waits and waits for a job to call him back, for someone to need a babysitter, for _anything._

 

_**_

 

Louis wills himself to take small, even drags from the cigarette between his fingers. There’s no point in panicking about any of it now. He’s stuck and watching the smoke curl up into wispy tufts and drift away towards the cracked street only reminds him of that, of how long it’s been since he’s left this place. The front door creaks open as Louis is debating calling up Jesy and Zayn to see if they have anything extra left over from their own meal. 

 

Harry drapes his absurd, camel colored coat with the fluffy collar over Louis’ shoulders as he sinks to the uneven slates of the wooden deck. 

 

The smoke from his cigarette melts away into the cold air, something caught somewhere between fall and winter making everything feel a bit more brisk. Louis can’t avoid feeling like a fucking _failure_ of a big brother: sitting out on the deck, smoking a cigarette from the pack that he hides in the potted plant, wearing Harry’s YSL coat as he tries to figure out how to get food to his family for dinner, tries to figure out who doesn’t have to eat tonight. 

 

Louis feels stifled, suddenly, in Harry’s jacket. He pushes it off. 

 

Harry’s fingers catch around his wrist, “Gimme a drag.” 

 

He smokes like a rich boy: all puckered lips and deep inhales, nothing furtive, nothing hidden like he’s trying to keep the smell and the smoke away from teachers or students. His eyelashes cast shadows over his cheeks in the light spilling out of the house. 

 

“What the hell does Zayn smoke?” 

 

Louis shrugs, drops the burning bud under his foot to crush it. He definitely can’t afford the house burning down, “Whatever he can get cheapest.” 

 

It’s true. He used to smoke menthols, then the doctor’s trips started adding up, and there was talk about adopting a kid. Louis tilts back on his hands to watch the way that twilight falls over Chicago. It’s hard to imagine his kids not eating tonight. They’ve made it so long without having to go hungry, made it so many nights without starving that Louis wasn’t worrying about it. The squirrel fund had been full. 

 

Harry’s eyes are intent on the side of his face. 

 

“What d’you want?” 

 

He shrugs, broad shoulders lifting jauntily up and then down. His eyes find the neighbor’s house across the street and fix on the golden glow of the light above the dinner table. 

 

Louis thinks that he knows, that Harry can read him too easily already. He’s not going to say it. Getting fired from the cup company just because he had to miss another day of work to take care of his mom— That’s not fair. It’s never fair, always someone else taking out their crappy days on him. Louis teethes along his lower lip.

 

Beside him, Harry reaches under his coat for the pack of cigarettes. He’s careful with them, careful to light it in the most effective way possible so it doesn’t get wasted. Louis watches him bring the cigarette up to his pouted lips and thinks about whether he could get Lottie and Fizzy to smoke in an effort to make them less hungry. 

 

To cover his disgust with himself, he murmurs, “I want a drag.” 

 

Harry holds it so close to the end that Louis’ lips end up brushing against his fingers as he inhales. He holds it for as long as he can before he exhales. The rush of relaxation that nicotine usually grants him lasts all of five seconds before he’s back to _what am I gonna do?  what am I gonna feed them?_ Louis hates himself, as he begins to shiver in the cold air, for not being strong enough or smart enough or _driven_ enough to keep a fucking job. 

 

“Put the coat on, Lou,” Harry insists, bluish grey smoke curling away from his lips as he speaks, “Stop being stubborn.” 

 

“I’m not being fucking stubborn,” he pushes the coat farther away from himself, “You know, I came out here to be _alone._ Don’t you have somewhere to be?” 

 

Harry stays silent beside him. 

 

“Like, don’t you have your own home? Someone to eat dinner with besides my family?” Louis’ anger feels better than the helpless, bottomless sadness of failing, “Are you gonna fucking leave any time soon?” 

 

Harry calmly snubs out the cigarette on the sidewalk. It burns brilliantly for a second: a red circle that he smashes into the wood with his YSL boots. Louis hates him so much, so blindingly that he can’t breathe. This dumb ass, rich boy from the north side who won’t _fucking leave—_

 

“Are you gonna fucking tell me what’s wrong anytime soon?” 

 

Louis stands, hands balled into fists at his sides, “You, currently.” 

 

Harry’s laugh is hazy smoke and sucking cock, low and throaty, “You’ve got ninety nine problems, Lou, and your own pride is every single one.” 

 

“ _Fuck_ off,” he wants to hit Harry. The satisfaction of seeing his own palm print red and smarting against Harry’s skin is tamped down by the reminder of Jay’s face when Dan hit her, by the betrayal he felt when Nick turned on him and threatened to kill him, “ _Fuck_ you. I don’t need you.” 

 

“ _Please,”_ he grins, lazy, head tipped back, neck bared, “Fuck me. I’d love for you to.” 

 

Louis doesn’t know whether or not he should be thankful that Harry didn’t blatantly attack his lie about not needing him. It’s only been seven days. Louis can’t need someone in that little amount of time. Except he does, maybe. Harry is warm and grins when he sees Louis like he’s genuinely happy to see him. There aren’t many people like that in Louis’ life. He doesn’t demand things either, not food or shelter or money or— 

 

“What’s _wrong?”_ Harry’s eyes fix on his crossed arms, his spread legs, “Louis, it’s not—”

 

“It is!” He exclaims into the still tranquility of the neighborhood. Across the street, he hears a muffled _shut the fuck up! “_ It is, Harry, because I can’t feed my own siblings because our _mom came and stole—”_

 

Harry’s hands settle onto his hips and tug slightly. Louis doesn’t want to be touched, isn’t sure he deserves to be touched in a way that isn’t hurtful or punishing at the moment, but he goes forward into the wide splay of Harry’s legs all the same. The shame clawing at his throat makes it hard for him to make eye contact with Harry. He doesn’t. 

 

“You didn’t _do_ anything,” Harry whispers. 

 

Louis doesn’t uncross his arms, “That’s the problem.” 

 

“You’re not superhuman, y’know?” Harry’s voice is soft, could fade into the turquoise twilight if Louis let it. His fingers pet at the skin under Louis’ sweat pants, “You’re not Thor or Captain America or Hulk or _whatever—”_

 

“Is this where we talk about your men in spandex kink?” Under the guise of his joke, he feels safe enough to look into Harry’s gaze. 

 

Harry’s biting down on a fond, wide smile, looking a bit like a frog. 

 

“My own feelings about your ass in spandex aside,” Harry’s fingers ghost over the dimples of his lower back, “You are a fantastic brother to those kids.”

 

“Why is everything so fucked up?” Louis whimpers, lost for words, lost for feelings. He’s just always _fighting._ There are never stress free days in his life, and he isn’t sure whether he’s breaking or already broken, whether he can stand this for any more time. 

 

Harry kisses his temple, “Because some deity is a sick bastard.” 

 

“I don’t believe in God,” Louis whispers, “Is he punishing me?” 

 

It’s everything he needs to hear and nothing he needs to hear at the same time: “If I were you, I wouldn’t believe in God either.” 

 

Harry eventually convinces him to leave the porch and go relax in his bedroom after repeated promises of getting dinner on the table. It isn’t what he wants to do, but it is what he needs. He tucks himself under the old, dark blue comforter resting on his bed and focuses on closing his eyes, on slowing his breathing. He does manage to fall asleep.

 

When he wakes up in the morning, Harry is asleep beside him, matted curls and big dark circles under his eyes. Louis can’t stop the bottomless feeling in his chest. He feels gutted, when he looks at Harry, hollowed out and left to dry until only the truths are left.

 

The kids wake up easily: Lottie and Fizzy and Daisy and Phoebe bounce up, apparently happy to be woken. Louis doesn’t look that gift horse in the mouth. He walks down to the kitchen with promises from all of the girls that they’ll put on jeans and sweaters, because it’s getting cold. He doesn’t have to work, so he leaves the babies to rest. 

 

Louis rubs his eyes as he walks down the stairs. He isn’t sure what he’s going to be _able_ to make for breakfast, isn’t even sure what Harry did for dinner last night. When he walks past the living room and into the kitchen, his questions are answered. The counters are _full_ of food: bread resting in a basket, cereal in the cupboards, cans and cans of vegetables and soups, macaroni lined up. Louis opens the fridge with a hand fisted tight in the sweatshirt he’s wearing. Full. That same bottomless, horrifying intense feeling sweeps through Louis. He can’t _breathe_ with how much he feels for Harry. 

 

The kids go to school after eating scrambled eggs and toast and fruit. Louis closes and locks the door quietly before going back upstairs. 

 

Harry is lying on his side, hands cushioned under his cheek, when Louis arrives at the entrance of his bedroom. 

 

“You went grocery shopping,” he murmurs, staring at the floor. It’s not adequate enough, isn’t even close to what he actually needs to say. 

 

Louis doesn’t look up, but Harry responds, “I had groceries _delivered,_ actually.” 

 

In the stormy, grey light filtering in through the dirty window, Harry is the only thing with any color in his room. He’s all milky skinned and light eyed and red lipped and Louis is walking over to the bed because it’s a crime to not touch him. Harry’s not cocky like he normally is here. In Louis’ bed, Harry is sure of himself in a quieter, softer way.

 

Louis curls up in the indent that he normally sleeps in. If Harry wanted to touch him, he could. Louis isn’t sure what’s worse: how badly he wants Harry to touch him or how badly he wants to touch Harry. They seem equally urgent when he looks at the fluttering of Harry’s dark eyelashes, equally important. He could compare Harry to every other boy who’s ever laid in these sheets, every other boy who’s ‘o’ face he’s become intimated acquainted with. Louis doesn’t. Self consciously picking at the sheets resting between them, Louis whispers, “You didn’t have to do that.” 

 

Harry huffs a quiet sigh. When warm fingers curl around his hip, Louis just inhales through his nose, waits. 

 

“You shouldn’t have to do this alone,” is what Harry finally says. His voice is low, even, “You’re not alone, Lou. ‘M not going to _let_ you be alone in this.” 

 

Louis looks up at that. As a ground rule for his entire life, he doesn’t believe promises that aren’t backed up by blood oaths or money. He wants to believe Harry, wants to be able to take some of the weight off of his shoulders. The tired, earnest boy across from him hasn’t lied to him yet. Louis touches at the highest part of Harry’s cheekbone, doesn’t say anything.

 

Harry scoots across the bed. They press together in the dawn like two survivors tugging on the same life boat. It feels that way sometimes, feels like something essential when Harry’s fingers dig into his back and pull him in tight. Louis breathes out, nuzzles into his collarbone.

 

“You’re the best boy,” he murmurs, finding the tip of Harry’s collarbone and sucking a kiss there. 

 

Lips move over the crown of his head, press a kiss to his temple, “You’re the best boy, Lou.” 

 

Louis makes a small noise, something too close to a whimper for him to not be ashamed of it, before he’s leaning back to find Harry’s lips. The kiss tastes like sleep and warmth. It’s familiar: Harry licking at the seam of his mouth, his lips parting, the way that Harry bites his lower lip and tugs gently. He can’t be this way with anyone else. They kiss and kiss and kiss, Harry’s fingers eventually hooking in the back of his shirt and tugging, exposing his shoulder. Before it can get cold, Harry’s kissing down his neck, over his hammering pulse, nipping at his shoulder in a way that isn’t meant to bruise. 

 

Everything feels like being made too visible in the morning light: Harry’s lips moving over his neck and the absurd, silly, gentle way he nuzzles into Louis’ armpit just to laugh and kiss there too. The way they grin at each other, stilted breaths, hands tangling and untangling. The long, coaxing fingers that slip under the fabric of his briefs and ease them over his hips. Louis’ skin goosebumping immediately. 

 

Harry is so gentle: he smoothes hands down to Louis’ knees before crooking them to rest over his shoulders. Louis should feel exposed. His hard cock is resting against his lower belly, Harry’s head is turned, nose skimming up his inner thigh, lips and tongue just barely touching. It feels, simultaneously, like being taken apart and put together, altogether too much in the morning when he’s already feeling so worn raw. Louis squirms a bit, when Harry licks up the musky seam of his thigh and groin.

 

“Taste so good,” is what Harry whispers, long fingers ghosting up and down the outside of his meaty thighs, “Smell so good.” 

 

Louis blushes, heat pooled in his abdomen. He thinks about Harry making love to him sometimes with touches like this, with words like this, with everything in their lives coming together seamlessly. Harry doesn’t make love to him on this morning. It might be worship, the way that Harry mouths at the skin behind his balls, kisses there. It might just be sex, the caress of lips over his hole, there and gone, before Harry’s licking up the crease between his other thigh and groin. It might be pride that causes Louis to stifle his whimpers in his arm. Louis can feel Harry rocking against the bed to relieve pressure on his cock. Acknowledging that would be too much. 

 

His head falls back, eyes closed, as Harry bites into the thin skin of his inner thigh. There are large hands working up, cupping his bum cheeks to pull them apart, the ghosting of a finger over where he really wants something.  

 

“ _Please.”_ It’s the first and only thing he can think to say. 

 

Harry doesn’t tease where Nick would’ve made him beg for it, where Stan would’ve made him wait until he’d been a good boy. Louis’ body responds like a live wire to Harry’s tongue over his hole, quick licks and then broad, flat licks, and then Harry’s tongue working inside of him, little by little. He clenches around it, tired of feeling so empty. The threat of being full is almost as good as the real thing.

 

When Harry finally slithers back up his body, Louis just presses into his chest, tucks his head up under Harry’s neck as Harry nudges the head of his cock into Louis’ body. They’re as quiet as they can be: Harry panting into the crown of his head, the bed squeaking out a weak protest every time Harry fucks into him, Louis leaving nail marks bitten into Harry’s broad shoulders. Louis can’t _think._ He’s getting loud, knows it. 

 

Harry presses two fingers to the seam of his lips, and he comes like that, sucking happily along Harry’s fingers, imaging the fat throb of a cock on his tongue. 

 

**

 

They don’t talk about what the slow, quiet way they had sex meant, so different from their frantic, dirty fucks. Louis has been in relationships like this before, but it’s never simmered off into something quite like this before. 

 

He doesn’t know what to do with the fond feelings for Harry bubbling in his chest.

 

**

 

“You did _what?”_ Harry squawks. 

 

Louis whips around from where he’s doing dishes at the sink to face a clearly shocked Harry and a pinked cheeked, sheepish looking Daisy. She’d had a blue sheet in her backpack today, which means that they have to go meet with the principal tomorrow morning. Daisy had been mum on her offenses. Judging by Harry’s wide eyes and parted lips, she’s told him what she did. Louis tries to fix her with the sternest look he can muster over the breakfast bar and the scarred wood of the table. 

 

“Daze—”

 

Georgia doubles over, holding her stomach as she laughs. “Holy _fuck.”_

 

Phoebe points a little finger at Georgia, “No saying fuck.” 

 

Harry looks between Georgia and Phoebe and Daisy. He looks puzzled, maybe a bit taken aback. Louis searches for any of the tell tale signs of fear and finds none. He doesn’t think on the way that relief settles in his chest, his heart slowing. 

 

“What happened, Daisy?” 

 

“He wouldn’t leave me alone!” Daisy exclaims, her hand banging down on the table. She’s small: all knobby knees and the smooth ball of her wrist joint, sinewy and young and golden from the summer, “So I kneed him in the— _you know.”_

 

Harry smiles down at the table, “Daze, you probably shouldn’t make a habit of, you know—”

 

“Kneeing people in the nuts,” is what Georgia finishes. 

 

“Why wouldn’t he leave you alone, Daze?” Louis rinses his hands of the excess bubbles on them before rounding the table to sink into the spot beside Harry. Under the table, Harry’s wide palm finds his thigh. He tries not to grin as he looks into the wide, watery eyes of Daisy, “I’m not mad at you. Promise.” 

 

Georgia scoffs, dragging Phoebe out of the room with her. 

 

“ _Promise?”_ Daisy asks again. 

 

Louis nods, “Cross my heart.” 

 

“He said that Georgia was gay,” she whispers, staring hard at the way that her fingers twist and fit together, locking in the rough approximation of a fist. Louis takes a long, bitter moment to feel horrified about how children handle accusations of homosexuality, about how little education is going on, how badly everyone is failing to mange this situation, “He said that she liked to eat carpet. And she doesn’t!” Daisy exclaims vehemently, “She’s never eaten the carpet here—”

 

Harry tries valiantly to disguise his laugh as a cough. 

 

“Love,” Louis sighs. He taps on the inside of her wrist until she loosens her fist to clasp his hand in hers, “You can’t go around kicking people who say bad things about our family, okay? Talk to him—”

 

“Kick him with your _words,”_ Harry says sagely, nodding with his lips folded together. _Frog face_ , Louis thinks.  

 

“Harold—”

 

“It’s just a euphemism anyway. Like—”

 

She’s tiny, all skin and bones and little girl, but she whispers, “I wanna fuck him up,” and Louis can’t stop the feeling of pride that wells in his chest.

 

**

 

“Tell me a secret.”

 

It’s been ten days, and the thrill of learning these small, new things about Harry has not diminished. They got the kids off to school about a half an hour ago. Harry is messing around with the coffee machine, Louis reclined on the counter. In a few minutes, they have to separate: Louis has to find a job, Harry has to go steal cars. For now, the bubble of quiet and tranquil they’ve managed to create is nice. 

 

Harry’s shoulders go tense, “Tell _me_ a secret.” 

 

Louis laughs, hands wrapping around his coffee mug more tightly, “There are no more secrets left, Haz. You’ve seen all of the skeletons in my closet.” 

 

When Harry turns around, he’s very carefully staring down at the place where the oven is under Louis’ swinging legs. Louis debates pressuring him but bites his tongue. No one steals cars because they want to, he repeats, over and over again, his constant reminder that there is more to Harry than north side Chicago and shitty parenting.

 

“You have to give me a chance to explain,” is what Harry says lowly, “You can’t just leave when you decide it’s too fucked up or whatever.” 

 

It was meant to be light hearted, really. Louis doesn’t have time to get to know people intimately very often, but he _wants_ to with Harry, thinks that Harry deserves someone who knows him inside and out, the way he yawns in the morning and the way his eyebrows scrunch up when the water is too hot in the shower. Currently, the way that Harry teethes along his lower lip, the twisting and untwisting of his fingers, betrays that he needs to get something very _real_ off of his chest. Louis puts his mug onto the counter before opening his arms, “C’mere.” 

 

Harry looks up, “You might not want to—”

 

“I do,” Louis makes sure to look at him, “I will.” 

 

For being one of the tallest people that Louis has ever been with, Harry curls up the smallest of anyone he’s ever known. His wild hair is in Louis’ mouth, his arms tight around Louis’ waist, and Louis doesn’t know what to do with the barely contained anxiety simmering under Harry’s skin so he kisses Harry’s temple and waits. The kitchen seems to be holding its breath around them. 

 

“My dad was abusive,” Harry’s fingers move evenly up and down his back, “He was just. Drunk, I think, angry at my mom, and like— It was me or her. I knew that.” 

 

Louis’ first reaction is to ask who _isn’t_ angry about something in their life. He keeps his mouth closed. Hi second reaction is to tense and relax against Harry, something ugly and snarled uncoiling in his chest. 

 

“When I moved out,” his voice has gone nearly silent, “I slept with some of the wrong girls and then, some of the wrong boys, and there was this.” 

 

“You don’t need to tell me,” Louis murmurs, “You don’t. I’m not going to make you leave.” 

 

“There was a boy who asked me to sub for him?” 

 

Louis’ own fingers slip under the hem of Harry’s soft white shirt to find his warm skin. He’s such a beautiful, open, trusting boy. Louis can only imagine what he’d be like as a sub. Unbidden, worlds unfold behind Louis’ eyes: all of these different, safe places where he could give Harry something like that, where he could be that to Harry. They are not in any of those multiverses. 

 

“And it just,” there aren’t a vocabulary of words that are good for discussing sexual needs, Louis gets that, feels that acutely as Harry trembles against him, “I just need to be taken care of sometimes? I wear girls underwear sometimes? It’s just.” 

 

It feels urgent, in that moment, that Louis kiss him. He’s not disgusted, he’s not scared, he’s not sad, he’s not ashamed. Harry is easily one of the best things to have ever happened to him, and as he kisses across the bridge of Harry’s nose, across his cheek, down to the corner of his mouth, he doesn’t think that a pair of female’s underwear are that big of a problem. Everyone has their own things: Louis likes to be manhandled, likes to be _fucked._ For a while, he used that to punish himself for how badly he’d been to his siblings. 

 

He’s breathing unevenly across Harry’s lips when he says, “Wanna hear my secret?” 

 

Harry’s fingers dig into the meat of his back, “Yeah, please.” 

 

“I dated a drug dealer who gave me coke for my birthday,” Louis squeezes closer to Harry in the kitchen, as close as they can be, “and I left in on a counter. I’m lucky Fizzy’s _alive.”_

 

“Lou—” Harry’s shaking his head against Louis’ forehead. 

 

There have been so many people who’ve tried to convince him that everyone makes mistakes, that he’s doing the best he can. Louis doesn’t want any of those platitudes. He wants to acknowledge that he fucked up royally and acknowledge that he’s doing better now. They all are. 

 

Instead of listening to Harry flounder for an explanation, Louis kisses him: open mouthed and demanding, Harry pliant under his hands and tongue. They both have the entire stretch of their lives before they met each other. Louis isn’t going to punish Harry for that. He holds Harry closer to him, when they break apart, just breathes with him for long moments. 

 

**

 

It doesn’t come back up for a couple of days. 

 

They’ve known each other for thirteen days when Harry is leaning over the table to deposit a drink carrier from Starbucks, and Louis gets a peek of black lace sitting over his hip bone. 

 

Harry comes up to him at the sink with a wide grin on his face, tucking himself up against Louis’ back. 

 

“Hey, babe,” he murmurs into Louis’ neck, “Missed you.” 

 

Louis laughs, pushing gently into his embrace. His hands are soapy and hot, “Missed you too.” 

 

Harry doesn’t seem any more self conscious or any more vulnerable when he accepts the profuse “thank you’s” of all of Louis’ siblings as they slip out the door on their way to the bus stop with hot chocolates cradled to their chests, Georgia’s nodded thanks for the white chocolate mocha with extra whip. Still, Louis can’t stop himself from kissing at Harry’s neck, nuzzling at his throat, whispering, “They look good on you, babe.” 

 

**

 

The bar _finally_ pulls through, and Louis feels like he can breathe again.

 

**

 

Louis thinks that he’d be vibrating with nervous energy at this point: hands jittering, talking a mile a minute, causing a scene just to have something to do with all of the anxiety pulsing in his body. Harry is exactly the opposite. Seated beside Louis on the leather couch of the tattoo parlor, he looks serene. Glassy eyed, pink cheeked, glancing at Louis every few seconds. It’s a nice place, nicer than anything Harry could’ve found on the south side, clean and comfortable and light and relaxed, and Louis doesn’t know quite what this all means for their relationship. 

 

The last two weeks have been something beyond anything Louis dared hope for. Harry is supportive, curls up around him warmly at night, wakes up early in the morning to help with the kids. Harry hasn’t left yet, hasn’t asked when it ends, hasn’t asked Louis to abandon his kids. It’s never happened like this before.

 

“Hazza?” 

 

The man’s blue eyes zone in on Harry, mouth widening into a goofy grin beneath his page boy cap. 

 

“How the hell are you?” 

 

Harry must know the man because he’s rising. They embrace each other tightly, tucking smiles into each other’s shoulders, holding each other at arm’s length, eyes roving. Louis thinks it’s weird until Harry says, “The horse on your stomach is sick.” 

 

Shirt lifted, Harry’s fingers tracing across the black ink. Louis thinks of Mulan, absurdly. 

 

“Hurt like a bitch, so it better look good,” the man laughs. 

 

“Did you tap out?” Harry asks, lower lip caught between his teeth.

 

The man, tattooed and grinning like a pirate who’s stumbled on the booty of his life, shakes his head,  

“You sick fuck.” 

 

Harry’s cheeks flare pink, “Hey.” 

 

They laugh together over something that Louis doesn’t know about. In the glow coming from the tattoo lights, Louis watches men squint over tiny, perfect, precise black lines. The low hum of tattoo machines is like the background noise of the kids. Pinging around in the back of his head is his own guilt about leaving the home today, about not worrying about finding a day job because the tips from the bar have been so good. Instead, he’s here, being gestured over by Harry who is smiling softly.

 

He rises from the couch, grasps Harry’s proffered hand in his.

 

“This is Lou,” Harry says to the man, “Lou, this is Liam. Sparkles.” 

 

Louis can’t stop the small giggle that falls from his lips. Embarrassed, aware of how unmanly that sounds, even in the face of a man with the last name Sparkles, he claps a hand over his mouth. 

 

“Nice to meet you,” Liam’s eyebrows are quirked up, “You the hand holder today?” 

 

There is something else there. Something amusing in the quirk of Liam’s eyebrows and the uneven, hectic flush on Harry’s face. Louis trusts his instincts: it doesn’t feel bad to him. Harry is so gentle with him as they head to a private room, large palm coaxing in the center of his back. He sinks into the chair beside the the tattoo table while Harry lays back.

 

Liam is gentle but clinical with Harry. He pulls up Harry’s shirt, cleans the expanse of milky skin between Harry’s hipbones, settles two huge stencils there, presses them in to make sure the ink has stained Harry’s skin. Then, he pulls them off. Across the basket of Harry’s hips are two huge leaves of some type. Biting his lip, not sure if he should say anything, Louis just stares at the lovely way that frame Harry’s hipbones which rise like mountains out of his skin.

 

“I’ll give you a moment to decide. Gotta get more ink,” Liam excuses himself. 

 

In the silence, Louis wants to touch. He always wants to touch Harry, has almost made peace with that constantly humming under his skin. This person, the glassy eyes, the bitten lips, the flush, this person is entirely new. Near where his hands are splayed flat on the edge of the table, Harry’s skin releases warmth, goosebumped. 

 

“D’you like ‘em?” 

 

At the roughness of his voice, Louis looks up. 

 

Harry flushes deeper, staining down his neck, down to his lovely, sharp collarbones. 

 

It takes Louis a moment to understand. He has all of these vague recollections, words and half watched porn and the ridiculous, dopey way that Jesy and Zayn interact sometimes, clinging to each other. The terminology escapes him. He’s never seen someone like this before a tattoo, never actually seen someone like this in real life. Just echoes, in Jesy and Zayn. 

 

“Hazza,” Louis manages to grit out past the heat rising in his own chest. The room they’re in is suddenly too small, everything too hot. Why didn’t Harry tell him about this? How did Louis get so lucky? There are all of these small details about Harry that he doesn’t know. Louis wants to know, desperately wants to be comfortable feeling this vulnerable around Harry, “Babe, I love them.” 

 

He doesn’t reach out for Louis’ hand. 

 

“Are you—”

 

“’S only gonna get worse,” Harry whispers, eyes wide as they find Louis’, “You don’t have to stay, if you don’t—”

 

Later, Louis won’t be sure why he does it. The only thing that feels any degree of right is leaning up to Harry’s mouth and sealing their lips together. Harry’s fingers catch his hips, while he tries not to climb onto the table and straddle the skin that Liam will be tattooing whenever he comes back. They separate slowly, a slick noise that is too loud in the room, resting their foreheads together.

 

Louis will wonder, later, if he even knows the meaning of the words when he says, “I’m staying.” 

 

The tattoo goes well. Harry bites his lips through the pain, Louis’ fingers moving rhythmically up and down his arm. Liam doesn’t comment, tactfully, about how hard Harry’s gotten when they stop an hour in for a breather. There’s coffee, if they want, back in the main room. Louis shakes his head. His focus has narrowed almost entirely to Harry, stretched out and red cheeked on the table. 

 

At the end of three hours, Harry is dazed, beautiful, leans into Louis’ touch so heavily that he fears their ability to make it home. Gently, Louis tugs the keys to the Mercedes out of Harry’s hands. They drive home in near silence, except for the stuttering, halting breathes that Harry lets out every once in a while, his hands twitching at his sides. 

 

When they get home, it’s early afternoon. They shuffle, Harry in one of his coats and his pants, into the kitchen. Louis flickers on the coffee maker while Harry settles himself onto the counter, and they fall together while the kitchen fills with the smell of cinnamon.

 

Harry is affectionate and slow like honey after his tattoo. It’s rapidly becoming one of Louis’ favorite ways to see him: he’s not threatening like this. He’s as laid bare as Louis feels all the time around him. Harry’s snuffling into his neck, hands tight around his waist. Louis thinks, indulgently, in the quiet moments when the coffee machine stops burbling, that these are his favorite parts of Harry. The way his accent is almost impossible to understand. The little wrinkle between his eyes when he touches at Louis’ cup of coffee. The way he grins at Louis all warm and fond, when Louis whispers _you’re my favorite boy, Haz_.

 

They kiss lazily, and when that isn’t enough, Louis bends Harry over the kitchen counter and eats him out. Harry writhes, erection caught in his underwear and cockhead dripping, while Louis licks around his hole, nips, watches as it pinks up all pretty, desperate, small sounds falling out of his mouth. Because he’s been wound up for hours, it doesn’t take long until Harry’s coming across the counter top, back bowing as he moans and quivers. 

 

Louis presses into him so slowly, bites into his neck hard enough to leave a hickey. Against the kitchen counter, fingers between Harry’s hips and the edge of the cheap material, they fuck slow and deep, like the way Harry blinks when Louis puts him into their bed.

 

**

 

The front door bangs open, startling Louis from his contented staring into his cup of coffee. It isn’t time for any of the kids to be home, not for another hour, and he tries to still the anxious pounding of his heart when Georgia storms into the kitchen. 

 

“What the fuck?” Louis pushes off from the counter, “Georgia, what the fuck happened to your face?” 

 

She’s trying to cover her eye, where the worst of it seems to be, dragging her backpack along the floor in an effort to get up the stairs. Her feet hit the bottom stair just as Louis is reaching out for her hand, frantic and scared and concerned. Has this been what everything else has been leading up to? Has he been paying so little attention to her that he hasn’t noticed this happening? Has Harry caused him to miss this? 

 

“Geor—”

 

“Leave me alone,” she spins around, “Louis, it’s nothing, alright? Just let me go.” 

 

“I will not,” Louis is trying to grasp onto her arm again, futile, trying desperately just to make her finally talk to him about what all of this is about, “You’re hurt.” 

 

Her scoff echoes back at them on the dingy stairway, “Thanks, Einstein. Tell me something else I don’t know.” 

 

Louis never feels like he has to struggle against Georgia. They don’t fight, don’t bicker, generally agree on what the best course of action is. He never feels in the dark where Georgia is concerned. They’re both so open. The girl staring him down defiantly, her lower lip trembling, her eyelashes clumped up with tears on one side, lowered and bruised on the other, is not someone that Louis is familiar with. He breathes out slowly, “Can you at least tell me that you’re okay?”

 

Georgia’s cheeks dampen with her tears, “What the fuck do you care?” 

 

“How dare you,” Louis’ voice has gone low, dangerous. He’s aware, in some recess of his mind, that Harry is sleeping off a couple of orgasms upstairs. Georgia’s eyes are still so accusing, so narrow. What else has Louis missed in spending so much time with Harry? His chest constricts guiltily. He’s becoming Jay: the same foolish reliance on someone else who can leave so easily, same weakness for love, for someone to care. He hates that part of himself. 

 

He must’ve been silent for too long, because Georgia scoffs.

 

“Right. Thanks for all of your care, Lou.” 

 

“G—” but she’s gone, and Louis’ talking to silence. Angrily, hands fisted in his own hair, he sinks to the stairs. He can’t be Jay. These kids, his siblings, rely on him for too much. Louis doesn’t have time for someone he cares about so much they can completely break him. He’s not soft enough, not good enough, not worth enough. 

 

Frustrated, angry, a sob rips out of his throat.

 

One sob out. One breath in.

 

Louis knows what he has to do.

 

Even in the end, he’s selfish. The doorway to his own room has never felt more monumental than when he’s standing in it, watching the even rise and fall of Harry’s chest, the broad whiteness of his torso, the darkness of his tattoos, the part of his lips so inviting Louis feels his body curving towards it. Harry’s been sleeping for an hour. 

 

Closing the door behind him, Louis sinks to the edge of the bed near Harry’s newly tattooed hips. His fingers tremble when he touches them to the side of Harry’s face, thumb moving gently over his lower lip. 

 

Harry wakes slowly. His eyelashes flutter first, just like every morning they’ve woken up together, a reminder that Louis isn’t just in this for himself. However selfish his actions are, they affect other people. Then, he smacks his lips together. Pink lips, large hand covering the hand that Louis has resting on his face. 

 

Louis aches with loving this beautiful, impossibly good boy. 

 

“Hey, Haz.”

 

Warm, just woken up, Harry’s fingers curl around his, a smile turning up his lips.

 

“How’re you feeling?” 

 

Harry blinks, eyelashes fanning out like feathers against his cheekbones. He makes a low, humming sound, “Good, sore.” 

 

The hand around Louis’ heart clenches. He shouldn’t be punishing Harry for his own problems, shouldn’t have allowed Harry into his mess in the first place. Swallowing against the lump in his throat, Louis whispers, “I think you need to leave.” He’s not eager to stop touching Harry, because this could be the last time he gets to. Touching Harry is one of the only things in his life that feels right. Willingly giving that up feels foolish, more so as Harry’s eyes widen with recognition. 

 

“What?” Harry struggles to sit up. The skin of his hips is angry, reddened, raised. Louis feels bad, feels like someone has got a hand around his throat. Every fiber of his body strains towards the small, pained sound that Harry makes. They shouldn’t be having this conversation in a bed. “I know this isn’t, like— Normal. Lou, I know I’m not normal—”

 

A choked, strangled sob spills out of Louis’ mouth, because that all is so far from the problem. This beautiful boy who wears panties and likes getting tattoos and wants to put his sisters to bed is so far from the problem. 

 

“I’m not— You don’t have to deal with this, if you don’t want. I can stop it. I can—”

 

He’s impulsive, always seeking that next high, when he catches Harry’s hips between his hands. They’re facing each other now, Harry’s hands flittering around desperately until they finally settle against Louis’ face. Everything, when he gets into Harry’s orbit, always takes on this urgent, _now now now_ pressure in his chest. He’s always trying to find the time for Harry, always trying to make space for this boy within his life. Harry deserves more. Louis breathes out, thumbs just barely meeting the tips of Harry’s ferns. 

 

“Stop apologizing,” he breathes. 

 

Harry makes a small, aborted, helpless sound. “I don’t want to go.” 

 

It’s not what he’s expecting to hear. 

 

“Hazza,” and then, when Harry just bites his lower lip and silently cries, “I don’t want you to go either.”  

 

“Please, Lou. Please don’t—” Harry trembles, like a hairline fracture nearly at its breaking point. His shoulders bend down as he tries to make himself smaller, “Please, I can be different. I can help with the kids more. I can—”

 

He’s crying before he can stop himself. How can he possibly backpedal and make Harry understand? What can he possibly say to even begin to fix this? His heart hammers loudly in his ears, “Harry—”

 

“I can,” he pleads, “I can, I swear, I will.” 

 

“It’s not about you,” Louis begs, under the sounds of Harry promising to change, to be better, to be different, “It’s not you, it’s not you, it’s not you. You’re the best, you’re not doing anything wrong—” 

 

Harry’s fingers tighten on the back of his neck when Louis seals their mouths together. He focuses most of his attention on Harry’s lower lip: there is something barely contained, primal about the way he wants to see it swollen, wants to watch Harry worry it between his teeth and know he had a hand in that. A small, needy sound leaves Harry’s mouth when Louis bites down a bit harder. It feels good, feels like healing, to kiss Harry. They will not be together after this, but they will be okay.

 

“Louis, please,” Harry murmurs into his mouth, “Please don’t—”

 

“Go, Harry,” Louis whispers even as his heart parts along the fault line , “Please go.” 

 

With that, he gets up and leaves the room. He’s careful about it: doesn’t look back like Jay always does, because that ends in tears, doesn’t linger in the doorway like Harry does, all sparkling eyes and parted lips, the last gasps of a goodbye hidden in the hinges of his jaw, a whispered thing that Louis coaxes out with his thumbs. Instead, callously, Louis walks away from the boy in his bed. 

 

He doesn’t stay at their home. Resentment will build, if he sees Georgia after what she did, and he can’t have that. There is no room in his life for the kind of hatred he would feel. Georgia has enough going on in her life, if her bruised face is any indication. Breathing harshly, tears blurring his vision, Louis knocks on Jesy’s door. 

 

“Lou? Babe?” Jesy says.

 

Louis manages to gasp out, “I need Doris and Ernest,” before he crumples into her arms. 

 

It’s dumb and weak for Louis to be this emotionally hurt over a boy. Jesy’s arms are warm, familiar, coax him through the door in a way that means he doesn’t even have to move his head off of her shoulder. He’s pathetic, snivels and curls up directly into Jesy’s side on the couch, while she yells, “Zayn, can you bring me the boxed wine, love?” 

 

He doesn’t feel any better for having done it. Maybe that’ll come in time or maybe not at all, but Louis mostly feels empty, feels like someone gutted out all of the twisting corridors of his heart and drove the moving truck away without telling him where it was going.

 

Jesy and Zayn maneuver him so he’s laying down, tucking a blanket under his legs as he cries pathetically. Then, Jesy presses the tab on the boxed wine, splashing it into a tumbler. He feels like one of his siblings: babied, watched, looked after. For some reason, that makes Louis sob harder. When he was younger, right after Jay left and Dan died, people used to hug him so tightly, and he used to be so lost for what to feel. Something wasn’t right with him, something made him feel like he was going to cry every time. 

 

With a single hand, Jesy offers the pink wine to him.

 

“What did that fucker do?” Zayn murmurs, stroking hair back from his forehead.

 

Already snotty and disgusting, Louis smudges his face into the couch cushion. He can’t admit this all to them. He can’t. It takes a while for him to cry himself out. Hiccups and snot and the gentle petting motion of Zayn’s fingers through his hair, Jesy and Zayn quietly passing the glass of wine back and forth. 

 

When he feels wrung out, Louis looks up at Jesy’s wide, brown eyes. “I need Doris and Ernest.” 

 

She scoffs, “You are truly delusional if you think I’m going to let you leave without telling me what the fuck just happened.” 

 

Zayn nudges her, “Play nice.” 

 

“I have to make dinner,” he can tell by the way the sky has begun to burn orange and pink that the kids will be expecting something to eat, “Please. I can’t— Tomorrow, okay?” 

 

Jesy stands up, “I’m gonna break down your door at seven.” 

 

“Bring Bailey’s,” Louis pleads, sitting up to scrub a hand over his face. Zayn watches him, honey slow blinks of his wide golden eyes, chapped lips caught between his teeth. He hasn’t known Zayn quite as long as Jesy, only since his senior year, but he trusts him like a brother. They’ve been through some of the worst together. Zayn has helped his kids more than anyone should have to.

 

Reaching a tentative, slow hand across the gap between them, Louis squeezes his fingers. It’s warm, solid, comforting. Louis tries to not think about how badly he’s hurt Harry.

 

**

 

The night passes in a sort of timeless, uncomfortable blur. Louis can’t fall asleep. His bed smells like Harry, his shower smells like Harry. There’s emu oil resting on the counter, and he’s got a finger hovering over the call button on his cellphone before he realizes that Harry has a billion other tattoos and rich parents. There’s no way he doesn’t have some sort of lotion at his apartment. 

 

Louis watches the sun rise through bleary eyes before he wakes the kids up. Georgia’s face, the second day, is worse. Puffy, multicolored, blinking looks difficult, and the younger girls keep asking her how she got it. Louis half listens, curious. He thinks, as most things are these days, that the bruising could have something to do with Jade. 

 

That doesn’t make it better. 

 

Jesy pushes through the front door just as the girls are leaving. She pauses to give each girl a hug, clutching a bottle of Baileys to her chest over the snake shirt of Zayn’s with the cut off sleeves. They all kiss her cheeks, tell her to give Zayn their love. Louis feels like he’s going to cry. To distract himself, he watches Doris and Ernest lie side by side on the floor, cooing excitedly, rattles making hollow shaking sounds.

 

Without her makeup on, Jesy is younger. She’s seated at the kitchen counter, hands folded, when Louis dares to look back at her. 

 

“You look like hell,” she whispers, gently. 

 

Louis’ laugh, as his head falls into his hands, is more of a choke, “I feel like hell.” 

 

“Love,” Jesy reaches across the counter to wrap a warm hand around his wrist, “What happened, Lou? You just—” she shakes her head, “You were just sobbing, Lou. I’ve never. Not when Jay left, not when Dan died. Never.” 

 

Louis wants to say that he was ready for it. Leaving doesn’t happen all at once. He wants to say, even though it makes him choke with guilt, that Dan leaving had been a relief. The alcohol bottles had been cleaned up, the stench of vomit had eventually faded from the bathroom, Jay had been their mom again before she hit her depressive episode.

 

“I went to get Harry’s tattoo with him yesterday?” 

 

Jesy makes a small, interested noise. Louis doesn’t look at her.

 

“And he—” flashes of jade green eyes fluttering, ruby lips parting, the darkness of the ferns against the creaminess of Harry’s pale hips, “He just—” Admitting it makes him feel shaky and bare and young, “I just wanted him to stay so badly.” 

 

In the silent kitchen, Jesy’s stool screeches loudly. She rounds the counter with her arms already open. They snuggle up together: Louis’ arms around her waist, her arms caught around his hips. It’s comforting, familiar, like nights in high school when Jesy would ask _d’you think Zayn will ever want to be with me?_ Those people, young and silly and scared, feel eons away. Louis doesn’t even recognize them like that. He wishes that he felt confident enough in himself to voice that same thought to Jesy now: _d’you think Harry will ever want to be with me?_

 

Jesy’s nose is pressed to his temple when she whispers, “He knows, Lou. He knows you want to be with him.” 

 

“I was horrible to him,” Louis doesn’t feel right telling Jesy about listening to Harry beg. A part of him hopes that he can redo it, rewind it all, go up to his bed and find the sleepy, soft limbed boy he left there. “I was callous.” 

 

She laughs, “If you’re never callous to the person you love, you’re a better person than me. Zayn is—” Jesy shakes her head, “He’s the best person in my life, Lou, but he’s also the easiest person for me to be mean to.” 

 

Louis feels like a raw wound, like a fault line, like a supernova. He clutches her closer to him, buries himself in the fragrant place where her neck and shoulder meet. 

 

“It’s always easiest to be mean to the only person who knows you best, ‘cause you just. You’re vulnerable or some shit. I wouldn’t know about being vulnerable, because, you know. I’m me,” Jesy’s probably waving her hand around in the air, “Purple strap on and all.” 

 

Despite himself, Louis laughs into her throat. He understands, all the same, what Jesy is saying, and maybe he understands why Jesy and Zayn like to hurt each other during sex sometimes too. 

 

“He steals cars,” Louis says in his next breath, like that might make the way he treated Harry justifiable. 

 

“Alcoholic?” 

 

“No.” 

 

“Addicted to drugs?” 

 

“No.” 

 

“Major felonies?” 

 

Has he been caught? Louis laughs, because that is so Jesy. Of course she’d ask that. Small, scared of what she’ll say, Louis shakes his head, closes his eyes. He wants to feel taken care of, wants to lose himself in what Harry wants of him, wants to snuggle up in their bed in the afterglow and kiss until his lips buzz like live wires. 

 

“You will be alright, Lou,” Jesy kisses into the crown of his head, “Promise.” 

 

**

 

The next night, Louis gets in from work to the sound of Doris crying, sharp and loud. He doesn’t bother taking off his shoes as he tosses his coat onto the couch, making his way up the stairs and into the darkness of the girls’ room. Georgia’s snores, even and low, greet him from across the hall. Phoebe and Daisy snuggled up into a full bed, Lottie and Fizzy on the bunks. Louis would be irritated that no one got up if they all didn’t have school tomorrow. 

 

As it is, he bends down into the crib to hoist a sweaty, red-faced Doris into his arms. No point in waking anyone else up while he’s still running on adrenaline from the club. 

 

“Hey, Dori,” Louis murmurs to her, bouncing lightly in an effort to make her quiet down, “It’s bed time.” 

 

Her fists curl and uncurl against the nape of his neck. For a brief, almost painstakingly silent moment, she’s quiet, just harsh little pants against his skin. 

 

When she begins to wail again, Louis moves her out of the bedroom with him so as not to wake the girls. They walk slowly, up and down the hall, Louis shhh shhh- ing her. He’s exhausted and the longer Doris cries, the more he wants to place her on the deck, in the rusted out van, on Jesy and Zayn’s front steps. Louis needs to sleep. 

 

Again, teasingly, her crying peters out into weak whimpering against his sweaty neck. Louis kisses at the clean smelling crown of her head, thanking whoever was listening to him. Exhaustion weighing heavily on his bones in a way that makes even his pelvis feel tired, Louis turns to bring her back to her room. 

 

Whispering, “Time for bed again?” is apparently the wrong thing to do.

 

Once again, in the darkness of the hallway, Doris erupts into huge, full bodied yells that sound like they hurt. It makes Louis still, frustrated and tired and sad, clutching a tiny baby to his chest while she wails. Doris cries, red faced, too hot, and Louis wonders if maybe he should take her out of her onesie? If anything he could possibly do could quiet her down? 

 

It hits him like a freight train, like the freight trains that clatter past their windows. 

 

Harry. Harry always knew which way to rock the babies to get them to quiet down. He knew how long to wait after Doris stopped crying to put her back to bed, he knew when Ernest wanted a bottle, when he was wet, when he was just cranky and venting, crying for the fun of it. 

 

Before he can stop himself, Louis is burying his face into the fragrant, clean place where Doris is just beginning to finally have a full head of hair. His tears are quieter than Doris’, hiccup reluctantly out of his chest. He’s so tired, misses Harry so much, even as he strokes a soothing hang up and down Doris’ bumpy spine. It is so difficult to love things that are constantly changing. 

 

Louis closes his eyes and cries, holding Doris to his chest as she whimpers. 

 

**

 

“Jess.” Louis cackles, head tipped back onto Zayn’s pillow. They fall into each other, laughing at the way that Jesy screws up her face to mimic Zayn’s “o” expression. It’s the lightest Louis’ felt in the last two days. 

 

“I swear. Try keeping a straight face while he’s doing that. Thank god, he’s got a nice cock.” 

 

“I heard that!” Zayn shouts from downstairs, “I can stop eating you out for breakfast any time.” 

 

Jesy rolls her eyes, “And miss your morning blowie?” 

 

“It’s not my fault that my dick requires constant attention. You’ve spoiled him, J.” 

 

“Love you too, babe.” 

 

Zayn’s voice actually softens as he calls, “Love you more.” 

 

Louis doesn’t know whether to resent them or to gag, doesn’t know if he wants to wring both of their necks or hug them both so tightly they can feel how much of his heart belongs to them and their supportive relationship and the days when Louis walks in to them role playing, Zayn spread across the counter while Jesy whips him. It’s truly absurd, how much he loves these people and their steady, loving relationship. He doesn’t— Louis doesn’t know who else to talk to about love, if not the only two people he’s ever seen actually be in healthy love. 

 

When they settle down, Jesy is smiling softly, curling a lock of her hair around and around her finger like they’re fifteen and avoiding homework. She’s so much to him, really. Could Harry possibly mean anything close to what she means to him? Does he already? 

 

Louis tries to swallow down the feeling rising in his chest. 

 

“Babe,” Jesy eventually coos, her fingers soothing along the line of his jaw, “Lou—”

 

“I want him to stay,” is what Louis whimpers, “Jess. I want him to be with me.” 

 

**

 

The next couple of days pass in a haze: Louis doesn’t quite know what he’s doing during the day, lost and alone for the first time in a long time. He misses the reassuring presence of Harry. When the girls ask where Harry is, he can’t tell them anything concrete because he doesn’t know where Harry has gone: isn’t sure if he’s gone back to the north suburbs or if he’s in his apartment, isn’t sure if he’s stealing cars or locked in a jail cell. He tosses himself, guiltily, back into mothering his siblings. Georgia’s face heals, Louis stops feeling so raw, and things move on. They don’t talk about it. 

 

Going to work turns out to be the best kind of therapy Louis can find. There, the music thumps so loudly that Louis can’t hear his own thoughts, and he can take shots of vodka if things get really bad. Jesy is a constant, sparkling presence behind the bar, laughing off the more obnoxious advances, grinning when she gets big tips. They’re a seamless team, can read each other better than they know themselves sometimes. 

 

It’s been four days, when Louis walks into the house on Friday. In the mornings, when it’s three and the house is silent but for the sounds of sleeping children, and he can feel the ghost of Jay stumbling down the hallways, turning her luminous eyes on him from his own bed, Louis feels the most alone.

 

As soon as he’s in his darkened bedroom, he yanks off his suspenders and his shoes, shucking them into the corner. Carefully, he hangs up his shirt, folds his pants. His bed has become insurmountable, some nights. The pillows hold the smell of Harry’s curls, apples and vanilla, and the blankets don’t feel as good when they aren’t puddled around Harry’s hips.

 

It’s not. Louis doesn’t actively want people to stay. They always leave him, leave his siblings, fuck up everything in their wake. People are malicious and selfish and have baggage that Louis can’t deal with adequately because he’s a high school dropout with seven siblings. Harry shouldn’t have to be confined to that, shouldn’t have to deal with that.

 

Louis isn’t sure what to do with the knowledge that Harry might want to be here.

 

**

 

It’s early, too fucking early, when Georgia nudges his socked foot with her knee. 

 

He’s curled up on the end of his bed. Georgia, standing in her combat boots and her cream sweater, shakes her head before sinking into the spot where his chest arches back. She’s a calming heavy weight, and Louis allows himself to close his eyes against her and the morning sunshine. The morning light makes things look like sherbet: soft orange, soft purple, soft pink, soft blue, everything like a fairytale before the dragon. Louis wishes he could live in these mornings, in the warmth of Georgia sitting near him and their uncomplicated silence. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Georgia murmurs, picking at a fuzz near Louis’ knee. 

 

Louis clears his throat, blinking his eyes open again blearily. They feel heavy and gritty. 

 

“Hm?” 

 

She meets his eyes, “I’m not gonna say it again.” He can see every time Georgia was reprimanded with fists and belts instead of words when she goes small, her collarbones rising like the rungs of a ladder out of her skin, “I’m sorry, Lou, I didn’t— Harry didn’t do anything to me.” 

 

The world tilts dangerously on its axis. 

 

“I’m not even mad at you,” is what Georgia whispers. She’s so mature like this, sifting through her own feelings so they don’t fester and burn like Jay’s do, “and I didn’t think— I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have taken that out on you.” 

 

He turns his face towards her while the hopeful feeling swelling in his chest threatens to choke him. 

 

“I saw you and Doris.” 

 

Louis turns his face into the covers in an effort to escape this conversation. That point of the week was probably the lowest he’s ever sunk, lower than when Jay left, lower than when Dan died. He misses Harry, selfishly. He’s never known someone like Harry, never been wanted in the same deep, gentle way that Harry wants him. There was Nick, the drug dealer, and Stan, the abusive angry white boy, then Eleanor, for a brief spell, when he thought he could try being straight to make it easier for the girls. That ended with Stan in his bed again. And now, this, Harry. His body aches for Harry’s fingers, for Harry’s words. Against the comforter, Louis flattens his body to protect the truth curled low in his stomach.

 

“Louis, you deserve to be happy,” Georgia’s fingers comb hesitantly through his hair when Louis doesn’t jerk away, “I’m so sorry I punished you for mom’s mistakes. And, fuck,” she laughs, wet and low, “Probably mine too.” 

 

He shakes his head, angry and scared that he’s going to cry again. Georgia shouldn’t have to apologize for all of the ways that their mom messed them all up. 

 

“You aren’t mom.” 

 

Georgia thinks, probably, that the gift she came here to give him was Harry, permission to get Harry back. It’s the affirmation that he isn’t Jay that sends Louis reeling. He feels shaky when he meets Georgia’s wide eyes, “You mean that?” 

 

She huffs a strange, heavy laugh, “Of course I mean that. It’s not your fault that I forget who I’m mad at, sometimes.” 

 

Louis knows that: the all encompassing resentment that he’d always been unable to pinpoint the beginning and end of from when Jay left one night and didn’t bother fumbling home and the slow burn of _I want to be with a boy, I want to be with a boy._

 

She’s sifting fingers through the hair on the nape of his neck when she whispers, “Please go get Harry back. You’ve been pathetic, Lou.” 

 

He scowls, “Heeeey. I have not.” 

 

Georgia’s laugh is light, airy, calm, “You don’t have to live with yourself.” 

 

Louis wants to disagree with that. “I was terrible to him,” is what slips out instead.  

 

Again, it seems, other people know more about love than he does. His younger sister even:

 

“If you can’t be terrible to the people you love, then who can you be terrible to?”

 

They’re Jesy’s words, echoed back at him in a younger voice.

 

 The morning light feels too revealing when he looks up at her. She’s tired: faded reminders of the fist that smashed into her eye left in the cradle of her eye socket, lips chapped and bitten, nails chewed down. Louis wonders, abstractly, if she’s biting them because she’s nervous or for Jade, at this point, if those two things are synonymous. He wonders if that is love, giving your body permission to be a certain way for another person. Louis wants to tell her that he doesn’t have time for love, hasn’t had time to properly love anyone but his siblings. 

 

“He hates me.” 

 

“Harry Styles bought you that stupid frilly coffee drink you love every day for two weeks,” Georgia’s fingers tighten and loosen in his hair, quick reminders of her that serve to ground Louis, “He practically moved in with us and, if you’ve forgotten, this isn’t the Ritz, Lou.”  

 

He knows that. Louis knows all of these things, has played them in a frustrating, endless loop until they all blur together, shrink down to the way that Harry cradles his hips. There are so many things that Louis needs to get done today. He can’t afford to take a Saturday night off of work, has to make sure that Doris and Ernest have enough supplies for the week, a grocery list has to happen sometime, Georgia’s still got the story about her massive bruise hiding somewhere under all of the layers of this conversation. 

 

“G—”

 

“Please,” she rises quickly, “Go get your boy.” Georgia marches to his dresser and tosses him a pair of heather grey sweatpants and a— “Did he leave his clothes here?” 

 

It’s the lavender American apparel sweater that Louis wore at night when he got cold, bundled into a ball from angrily digging through his drawers, trying to erase all traces of Harry from the top of them so getting dressed wouldn’t make him cry.  

 

“Fuck’s sake,” Georgia says, shaking her head fondly at Louis as she tosses him the sweater, “Go get your boy, Lou.” 

 

The “L” has never seemed to take so little time. Louis sinks into a seat in the back of one of the cars, hoping for a bit of peace, a bit of time to get his head and heart to calm down. They’re both already reaching out, already pliant and warm, ready for Harry’s fingers. Louis doesn’t even know if he’ll be taken back. 

 

Mostly, he thinks that he just needs to apologize. He needs to tell Harry that what he said was a result of panic. He feels so much for Harry, and he’s so stressed so often. It all balls up in his throat, chokes him, and he can’t separate his own feelings. He was out of line when he kicked Harry out like that. That was callous and rude and a million things. Louis had wanted him to stay, if that means anything now. 

 

More than anything, Louis needs him. While he isn’t ready to examine what that means, he is ready to acknowledge that Jay’s mistakes aren’t his own, have never been, and punishing Harry for them was way out of line, especially when he was already vulnerable. 

 

When he arrives at Harry’s front door, he stops to take a deep breath. The light wood is the same, the seventeen glinting in dark black numbers is the same. Even the place where Louis’ belt buckle caught on the door that once, still there. Harry’s door makes him feel an instant of relief followed by the seemingly endless parade of his own panic.

 

His own knocks echo meekly back at him as he settles against the wall opposite the door. 

 

Harry answers the door in black boxers briefs, a white tee shirt revealing the dark sweep of two new tattoos on his collarbones. He’s got smoky bags shaded in the space under his eyes, a fine layer of fuzz on his chin. The place he carved out for himself in Louis’ rib cage throbs.  

 

There are a million things that Louis actually needs to say to Harry. An apology, an explanation, a thousand expressions of gratitude. A feeble, nearly silent, “I’m so tired,” is what Louis manages. 

 

“Yeah?” Harry’s stare feels like too much.

 

Louis blinks at the wetness behind his own eyes, “Yeah.” 

 

Calloused, warm hands slide around his wrists and tug him through the door. Louis wants to ask Harry what he’s doing, but he’s weak and selfish and his body feels better when it’s near Harry’s, so he stays silent. As soon as the front door is closed, Harry turns Louis around and settles his palms over Louis’ hips to guide him. Louis, tired, small, leans back on Harry’s broad chest. They walk, sleepy and slow, through Harry’s apartment. Everything has turned to shades of grey now in the light coming through his wall windows, muted and sorrowful, a lazy day. Louis wants to look at Harry’s face in this light, see if the truth is easier in these colors.  

 

When they pad into Harry’s bedroom, Harry’s side of the bed is unmade. Louis is reluctant to leave Harry’s hold. What if this changes things? What if Harry puts him to bed and leaves? 

 

He might know, might still be able to read Louis’ mind, because Harry is bending down to smooth the tenderest of kisses into the nape of Louis’ neck, where his sweater gapes off Louis’ shoulder. 

 

“Let’s go to sleep,” Harry murmurs. 

 

They climb into the bed together, gracelessly. Harry shucks his shirt, Louis allows his sweatpants to pool around his own ankles before he snuggles up under Harry’s chin. There are a thousand questions buzzing around in his head, a million apologies sitting on the tip of his tongue. 

 

He falls asleep to the even rumbling of Harry’s _we sit in bars and raise our drinks to growing old_ … 

 

**

 

Louis wakes up to a cold bed. Whatever part of his chest Harry has taken up a home in, jolts hard. For an agonizing moment where Louis feels foolish and broken, he turns his head into the bed and tries to breathe. A sob is, embarrassingly enough, threatening to tear out of his throat when he hears the unmistakable sound of Harry’s Keurig gurgling in the kitchen. A feeling of relief rises and crests in Louis’ chest. He should plan what he’s going to say, should make a plan of attack. Like normal, Louis decides against dwelling on it. He’s going in, plan of attack or no. 

 

He doesn’t bother tugging on his pants again. Harry has seen him in so much littler. Louis’ hands fumble with his sweater, twitch and try to straighten it, even as he walks out of the bedroom and down the hall, to the kitchen. His feet are cold on the floor, made colder by the rain pattering on the windows, and Harry, when he sees him, is reclined against the counter clutching a mug to his chest, blowing on it, ridiculous pink lips pursed. 

 

“Did you sleep alright?” Harry asks, voice low under the rain.

 

Louis wants to call him on his bullshit. They never made small talk, not from the first day. He’s staring at the floor, blushing, when he says, “Better than I have been, yeah.” 

 

“Coffee?” 

 

Without quite meeting Harry’s eyes, he walks fully into the kitchen. Again, Louis feels dumb. The way he treated Harry can’t be fixed by sleeping together, can’t be righted by sheer force of mental will. Louis can’t look at him long enough that Harry will read it in his stare. He’s gonna have to say it, for the first time in a long time. Louis makes a small sound of thanks when Harry passes a white ceramic mug of coffee into his hands before he hops onto the counter.

 

Minutes pass in silence, the slow sipping of coffee, Harry’s even breathing. 

 

“Why are you here?” Harry says nonchalantly when the silence has begun to take on a shape of its own. 

 

The way he says it, so flippant, makes Louis’ fingers clench around his mug. “I miss you,” is the most truthful, most terrifying thing Louis has ever said. 

 

Harry breathes out hard through his nose in something like a snort of laughter, “Don’t do something you’re gonna regret, Lou. Fuck’s sake.” 

 

“Is that—” his coffee is shaking so hard in his hands that he has to set it down, “Is that what you think? 

 

“Why else are you here?” Harry rounds on him, wide eyes wet, shoulders tense, “Come to finish what you started? You’ve made how you feel very clear, Louis. I gave you a quiet place away from your siblings to nap, so you can go now, if that’s all you’re here for.” 

 

His pulse pounds in his ears and in the fingers he has wrapped around the edge of the counter, but he doesn’t move. Louis is only beginning to realize how badly he fucked this up with Harry. He resolves, watching Harry turn away and scrub at his face under the guise of putting his mug in the dishwasher, that he isn’t leaving without clearing it up. 

 

“That’s not why I came here,” Louis whispers, voice tremulous. 

 

Harry’s shoulders heave.

 

“Harry.” 

 

He still doesn’t turn around.

 

Desperate, hopping off the counter, Louis pleads quietly, “Please look at me.” 

 

Low, Harry grits out, “Can’t.” 

 

Louis isn’t sure if he’s allowed to touch or what he’s supposed to do. He’s been in drug runs, has given someone a blow job to get the rent paid, has been to countless parent teacher conferences where social workers and CPS are brought up. Nothing compares to watching the big, broad, tattooed boy that he’s grown to need so much tremble against his sink. Grasping onto the lip of the counter in an effort to fight down the need to touch, Louis says, “Please look at me,” again. 

 

Harry turns around slowly. Tears have streaked silvery tracks down his cheeks, his teeth sunk into his lower lip to still its trembling.

 

“I came here,” Louis says, feeling rubbed raw just looking into his eyes, “because I miss you, H. I miss you a lot, and I— I think I need you, and I was so scared of that.” Louis laughs, wet and strangled sounding, “Jay needed Dan, and when he killed himself, she completely lost it. Couldn’t stand the sight of us. Left one night and never fucking came home.” 

 

Harry’s eyes widen.

 

“I cannot leave my siblings like that,” Louis whispers, voice low and hard, “I can’t. They need me. And I need you, and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for all of the dumb scared shit I said to make you believe I wanted you to leave.” I’m not Jay, Louis thinks, I will not break over one person.

 

It’s not fixed, not even close to fixed, but Harry is walking towards him slowly. 

 

Louis doesn’t look away, “I don’t— Please don’t listen to me next time,” his voice has gone thin and pleading and reedy, embarrassingly emotional, “Please shut me up next time. I want—”

 

Harry’s arms come up on either side of Louis’ body to rest over his hips again. He’s smaller than Louis has ever seen him, scared and tentative, and there’s a voice in the back of Louis’ head that says: you did that. There’s a louder voice, louder than the rain, louder than the thunder, that says: you can fix this. 

 

“I want to be with you for real,” Louis whispers, looping his arms around Harry’s strong neck, “Please be with me for real.” 

 

That’s all it takes for Harry to nuzzle into the nape of his neck, entire body curving around Louis’. They fall together like that: wrapped up in Harry’s kitchen, so close nothing would fit between them. Harry’s breaths are loud, tickle against his throat. Louis just runs his hands up and down every spare bit of skin he can find, pressing his palms up under Harry’s shirt, finding his heartbeat throbbing in his ribs and along his sides. 

 

Harry, when he’s had his fill, knocks his forehead into Louis’: mouth all soft and pliant, lips wide, eyes glassy, hands grasping needy and demanding along Louis’ sides. 

 

“I want to be with you too,” Harry murmurs, “I want that so much.” 

 

They kiss and kiss and kiss until Louis feels like his entire body is buzzing like a live wire. 

 

**

 

They fall back together just as easily as the first time, and it becomes a sort of game, Louis trying to figure out what the birds are about. He asks at random moments, while he’s got Harry incapacitated or distracted. 

 

“What’re these for?” He murmurs, while they’re cooking dinner, pressed together all along their sides. Louis fingers over the date up on Harry’s neck again, twisting around to touch it. 

 

“My mom and dad. Years they were born.” 

 

**

 

When he’s sat on Harry’s cock, clenching down around him, “What’s this for?” 

 

A coat hanger inked on the inside of Harry’s bicep. All he does is whine. 

 

Louis stops moving. 

 

“The—” Harry pants, “The closet. I was in the closet.” 

 

**

 

The ferns inked across Harry’s hips, “Why’d you get these?” 

 

Harry flushes, biting his lower lip. 

 

Louis bites into his bicep.

 

“I wanted to feel pretty.” 

 

** 

 

The portrait on the back of Harry’s arm: “He’s a bit like death, isn’t he? When you have to watch people die, you—”

 

Louis kisses his shoulder blade, squeezes his arms around him tighter.

 

**

 

It takes a week for Harry to tell him. They’ve had a tense day: Harry was almost caught in a stolen car, only just barely got away, Louis saw Nick at work and decided not to go in. 

 

“Hazza,” he’s got three fingers in Harry’s hole, Harry’s panties anchored below his bum as he squirms forward into the bed, “What are those birds for?” 

 

Harry pants, hands clenching and unclenching in the bed sheets, “Please.” 

 

“Tell me,” Louis kisses up the back of Harry’s thigh, devotes time to the hickey he’s been making in the crease there. Harry croons into the sheets, goes tight around Louis’ fingers. 

 

“They’re—”

 

Louis stills. 

 

“They’re for you. And I,” Harry sobs into the sheets, smudging his face back and forth as he hauls himself back on Louis’ frozen fingers, “I was worried—”

 

Louis rubs up against the sponginess of Harry’s prostate to help him. His mind has gone entirely blank under Harry’s admission. The only things that have any clarity are the shadows on Harry’s body, the golden pool of lamplight that just barely hides how dark the ink on Harry’s chest is. 

 

“I was worried that you weren’t going to come back to me.” 

 

Relationships aren’t equal in Louis’ world. There’s always someone who cares more, who has more to lose. Louis realizes, with a start, as Harry squirms forward into the bed, cock head fucking up against the white sheets, that _Harry_ has just as much to lose as he does.

 

Louis rests his forehead against Harry’s hip, “You’re crazy,” he mumbles, feeling the flexing of Harry’s body as he works himself off. “You’re crazy, Harry.” 

 

Harry sobs into the sheets, clenching again, skin hot and sweaty, “I’m in—”

 

He comes. 

 

**

 

For the first time in a long time, he’s content to bask in the normalcy: nights at the club, days with Harry, kids at school. Louis tries to distance himself from what Harry said about the bird tattoos. He doesn’t— he’s not worthy of something like that. 

 

Nonetheless, it feels good to have something constant. 

 

He still hasn’t been able to coax Georgia into telling him how she got her gnarly bruise. For a while, Louis let’s that go too. Jade has been around a bit more, things have been a bit tense between her and Georgia, but it isn’t his issue. It isn’t his place. When he sees Georgia press a fleeting, gentle kiss to the seal of Jade’s mouth before she leaves, Louis thinks he could probably guess at the issue, but he doesn’t. He remembers coming into the awareness of his own sexuality: the thrum, incessant and loud, of wanting to _kiss a boy kiss a boy kiss a boy._ He’d resented people who’d tried to push that awareness on him. He trusts Georgia, trusts that her own intelligence won’t allow her to put off the realization for too long. 

 

He’s right.

 

**

 

“I’m gay,” Georgia whispers, fingers knotted in her sheets, “Like, I— I want to kiss girls.” 

 

Louis breathes out. This has been months in the making: her constant rebellions, the bite marks along her throat that she never seems to remember getting or from whom, the locked door, the porn under her bed, Jade, the bruise. He’s relieved, elated that Georgia felt comfortable enough to tell him. Louis tucks his hand beside her’s: not grasping but touching. “And that’s okay.” 

 

“Louis, I. I want to— _Fuck.”_

 

He remembers that: every single cell in his body reaching so powerfully for _someone,_ and that someone turning out to be a boy. Sitting in his freshman English class and wanting so, so badly to sit on his TA’s kitchen counter and catch his thin, lower lip between his teeth, turning words from old, American classics into imagined endings: this is how it will feel when he writes _you make me feel complicated nonsense_ into the skin of my thighs, this is how it will feel when he presses the Sanskrit words from Eliot’s _The Waste Land_ into my collarbones. The TA had these thin, bony wrists, and he didn’t know how to control the group of rowdy freshmen in his care at all, but Louis had imagined sitting in his bed and writing crappy sonnets, half drunk on the way he talked about getting an MFA in Poetry, how he only looked soft enough to touch with Siken in his hands. Louis smiles at Georgia, just barely, heaviness permanently etched into the corners of his mouth. 

 

She has her eyes on her twisting fingers, and her lower lip caught between her teeth when Louis says, “You’re not a serial killer, G. You’re alright. You’re not— Like, wrong or— Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re wrong.” He remembers resenting Jay, resenting Dan, resenting _everyone_ because he didn’t know how to put any of the things he was feeling into words. “There are so many worse things to be. Than, you know.” 

 

In the fading light of the day, Georgia snorts an ungraceful laugh. She looks fragile: the sharp branches of her collarbones protruding out of the neckline of her ratty sweater, likely Jay’s, and the restless way her fingers coil and uncoil in the bedspread, “Than in love with a girl?”

 

Jade is a beautiful girl: her blue hair and her knobby knees and her pigeon toes and her ungraceful accent. Louis can think of a hundred people all worse to love than Jade. 

 

“Yes,” Louis says, surprisingly strong. He remembers being so angry for so long and can’t stand the thought of Georgia in the same place. “Jade is—”

 

“Everything?” Georgia answers, voice wavering. 

 

Louis thinks, unbidden, of Harry, of the warm boy who steals cars and then curls up in his bed and giggles when Louis licks over his anklebones. He looks at the girl, _woman,_ who has slowly come into being beside him. Realistically, he couldn’t have done any of this without Georgia: they worked together, they saved money, they made sure the other kids had somewhere stable when both of their parents left without any words or remorse. Hoping that she doesn’t rebuke his advances, Louis twists their fingers together in the space between their thighs. Soon, the other kids will be home, the house will come alive with noise and yelling and Harry will make things complicated because Louis can’t stop having feelings for him and is always two seconds away from blurting out a confession of love. Right now, he rests his head against the boniness of Georgia’s shoulder. 

 

“You should maybe tell _her_ that,” Louis whispers, trying to fight down the grin on his face.

 

Georgia guffaws, loud and ungraceful, so much like Harry. “Oh my _god,_ Louis.” 

 

“What?”

 

She tips her head on top of Louis’. For the space of a few heartbeats, they rest together, quiet and soft and easy, like nothing else in their life ever is. Collecting the insurance money from Jay’s mom will make things easier, hopefully. It’s not enough, nothing is ever enough, but they’re managing. For this small moment, Louis lets himself relax into the space beside Georgia and not worry about jobs or Harry or the kids.

 

“You gonna tell Harry you love him?” 

 

“Excuse you,” Louis says weakly. 

 

Her hands soothe up and down his spine, gentle, “You haven’t been in love with a boy in a long time, Lou. Maybe _you_ should tell Harry you want his cock on a regular basis.” 

 

“ _Excuse_ you,” this time there’s more conviction. “Don’t talk about Harry’s cock like that.” 

 

“Why?” Georgia’s nails scratch into the hair at the nape of his neck, “His self worth is directly connected to that thing, I’m sure. Anything I can do to lessen that, you know. Just doing my part for the economy and the world.” 

 

He forgets, sometimes, that Georgia is one of the smartest people he’s ever met. Louis turns into her shoulder to stifle a laugh. He really should _not_ be laughing when he’s so fond of that cock and the boy attached to it, “Harry’s a good—”

 

“ _Please,_ you wouldn’t fuck him if he didn’t have something scary in his closet.”

 

Louis resents and resembles that accusation. He takes a deep breath, praying that it doesn’t break some huge parenting codes that he’s talking to his sister about this. It’s been all snarled up in his chest, teething along his stomach and his heart and his mind, waiting for the right moment to kill him. He just. He can’t not tell his family about this anymore. Not when he’s potentially going to bring Harry into this household on a permanent basis. 

 

“He steals cars sometimes,” Louis murmurs.

 

Georgia’s fingers, to her credit, don’t even still, “Drug habits?” 

 

“Not regularly.” 

 

“Alcoholic?” 

 

Louis actually laughs out loud, “ _No._ Fuck, G. I wouldn’t— No.” Dan, the last months before he killed himself, flashes through Louis’ mind: the nights he passed out on the floor because he couldn’t make it to anywhere softer, and no one would help him up, the endless parade of alcohol bottles on the kitchen counters like a demented set of pins that Dan was determined to knock down. Louis would never put the kids back through that. “Before you ask, no, he isn’t mentally ill.” 

 

“He _is_ dating you.” 

 

“Fuck off,” if anything, Louis curls closer to her, closer to her warmth and the radiance of the grin she hides in his hair, “Georgia, I really do love him?” 

 

Abruptly, everything in Georgia’s cluttered room becomes serious. She and Louis have had the single rooms for as long as he can remember, because he moved into their parent’s room. Sometimes, he lets Daisy or Phoebe or Lottie crawl into bed with him. Sometimes, Georgia falls asleep talking to him or reading one of her books. Louis is insanely thankful for their single rooms now. Georgia’s comforter is dark blue beneath their knees. Louis focuses there, wills himself to breathe, remembers that no one else has heard him say that. 

 

“It’s alright to have feelings, you know,” she whispers, voice low, “He’s good to us, Lou, and he obviously makes you happy.” 

 

“What if he hurts—”

 

“Us or you?” Georgia’s arm slides around his waist. They slot together so closely. “If he hurts us, you’ll kick him out and change the locks.” The day after Stan left, when he left Doris and Ernest in a hot car for six hours to fuck another boy, Louis spent way too much money out of the squirrel fund on new hardware for their doors and spent hours putting it in. “If he hurts you,” beneath his head, Georgia shrugs, “I’ll nail his balls to our front door.” 

 

“Violent.” 

 

“Kind. For this neighborhood.” 

 

Louis wants to ask Georgia if Jade’s parents have done or said something to bring out this violent streak. Instead, he allows Georgia to stand, brush the fuzz balls off of her jeans. She’s going to get the babies back from Jesy, then maybe to Jade’s. She’s so beautiful that Louis feels choked up when she kisses his forehead. For a long moment after she leaves. Louis just _breathes._

 

_**_

 

“And then,” Harry whispers conspirationally to Daisy, “The unicorns came.” 

 

They’re sitting around the dinner table, too cramped, too hot, all of the kids hanging off of every word out of Harry’s mouth. It’s been three months now since Harry walked into their lives. Louis wants to hate him. He wants to be able to resent the easy way that Daisy is grinning, pizza crust half out of her mouth like she’s forgotten all about it, the eager way that Doris smiles at him in the mornings when Harry comes into the kitchen with Doris on his hip and Ernest snuggled up under his neck. Louis wants to stop looking at him and imagining futures.

 

Busying himself, forcing himself out of Harry’s orbit, Louis rises from the table and goes to the sink to begin dishes. The repetitive motion of sink to dishwasher, rinse and repeat, lulls him.  

 

“ _No.”_ Lottie says. She giggles. 

 

“ _Yes.”_ Harry immediately springs back into his story, “Have you ever seen unicorns?” 

 

“Yes,” Daisy says primly, “They’re on my walls.” 

 

“Shit, Daze,” Jade responds. Louis can picture her leaning across the beaten up table, “Show me the unicorns sometime, okay?”

 

“Yes,” Daisy is besotted with Jade.

 

Magically, Georgia picks up the strand of Harry’s story. Her voice becomes a low hum in the background as Louis sings something off key to himself, thinking. It was strange for him to realize how much _planning_ being a parent involves. The dishes won’t take that long which leaves a good amount of time for the rest of the night: baths, homework, lunches for tomorrow, bills if they have the cash—

 

He’s so caught up in the list in his head that he misses Harry crowding into his space: front to the counter, cradled against Harry’s chest.  

 

“Hey,” Harry’s hands sit low on his hips, thumbs moving back and forth over his tense lower back. The kids have left the kitchen, Georgia’s voice drifting out of the cramped living room as her and Jade divide and conquer bedtime stuff. “You’re quiet.” 

 

Louis relaxes back into his touches, “That a problem, Styles?” 

 

“I love your noises,” Harry breathes into his ear, “You know that.” 

 

He’s determined: slips his thumbs down under Louis’ sweats to rub over the cleft of his bum, sliding lower and lower while Louis squirms against his half hard cock. 

 

“Harry— Babe—”

 

It does feel good. It always feels good to have someone so warm and soft and _gentle_ touching him, but he doesn’t have the time right now. They’ve got to get the kids ready for bed, they need to actually be parents. Louis has always chosen his kids over his relationships. He’s tired of that and yeah, of course he feels guilty about it. There’s not really any other choice. Louis reaches back to cover Harry’s hands with his own. 

 

“I can’t right now.” 

 

Harry, against the nape of his neck, breathes out slowly, “Want you so much.” 

 

He’s so free with his affection: doesn’t withhold it to make a point or to get what he wants, doesn’t use it as a currency or as a form of punishment. Louis has never had someone like him. He turns his face to the side, “Kiss me.” 

 

Humming lowly, Harry connects their lips. They kiss, open mouthed, slow, in the shadow of the light over the sink. Harry’s stroking him again, soft fingers and softer lips, tongue flickering in and out of Louis’ mouth like a promise. Louis allows himself to be wanted, allows himself to bask in the simplicity of Harry’s affections.

 

“After bed time,” Louis whispers, kissing along Harry’s lower lip, “Want you too.” 

 

Harry grinds forward like he can’t help it, jostling Louis’ hard cock. They both respond: Harry muffling a moan into his shoulder, Louis’ breath hitching audibly. 

 

“Before bed, babe,” Harry breathes, “Please, _please.”_

 

 _“_ No.” Louis moves, jaunty, away from Harry as quickly and as far as he can get within the tiny, cramped space of the kitchen. They absolutely cannot do something as reckless as have sex across the counters while the kids are awake. “Later.” 

 

With that, Louis leaves the kitchen for the living room and for the chaos of bath time. It takes about an hour to wash two squirming babies in the sink and make sure four teenage girls take full showers using soap. Georgia and Jade read bedtime stories, all of the kids piled on the queen bed together in a heap. It makes something jolt, warm and comfortable, in his chest. Louis could see his life like this. Even Harry, waiting on the couch downstairs after cleaning up the kitchen and making lunches for tomorrow, is fitting seamlessly. Nothing has ever worked so well since Jay and Dan disappeared. 

 

The kids go to bed with kisses to their foreheads, to their cheeks, _I love you’s_ murmured low into each of their ears so they hear him and understand him. Georgia and Jade shut their door, giggling into each other’s throats. Louis remembers that: trying so hard to contain the _want_ clawing at his belly that he had to release it against someone’s else’s skin. For long moments after he’s done, Louis leans back against the bathroom door with his head in his hands. 

 

He still needs to talk to Harry, needs to somehow say _I love you_ without wrecking everything. 

 

Staying as quiet as he can, Louis creeps downstairs. Things are clean: toys away, TV off, magazines stacked into neat piles on counters. Louis knows now that Harry is considerate enough to do these things. He walks slowly through the living room, chewing along his lower lip. There are times when he wishes he was like Jay or Dan: weak enough to turn to illegal substances to shut off the buzzing of his own mind. Right now, he just wishes he was better equipped to deal with his own thoughts. 

 

The kitchen is clean and quiet, all except for the boy sprawled in one of the chairs around the kitchen table. His legs are wide, bare feet tapping aimlessly against the scuffed floor, fingers playing along his lower lip, curls tussled wildly across his forehead. Louis allows himself to stand in the doorway and stare for a moment. 

 

“Lou,” Harry’s cheekbones are reddened, “Stop staring.” 

 

Louis wants to laugh. How long did Harry spend staring at him in the club before Louis agreed to go on that first date with him? How many times did he tell Louis that he remembers what Louis was wearing the first day he saw him? Shaking his head as he crosses the floor, Louis says, “Don’t think I will.” 

 

Greedy, tight hands wrap around Louis’ hipbones, “Not fair.” 

 

“Gotta catch up to you. Lots of staring to make up for.” 

 

“’S embarrassing,” Harry mumbles as he pulls Louis into the triangle between his spread legs, dropping his face to the juncture of Louis’ throat, warm and wet lips and the cold of the tip of his nose, “Be nice to _me.”_

 

Louis moves gentle fingers over the nape of Harry’s neck, “I’m always nice to you.” The crown of Harry’s head smells like the girls’ shampoo because he’s been spending so many nights here. That’s not a _thing_. That assurance, that warmth. The _thing_ is that Harry hasn’t left yet. Despite Jay and Dan and the whole mess of his life, _Harry is here._ “I’m so thankful for you, Harry.” Louis whispers, kissing Harry’s forehead. “I—”

 

Harry’s arms tighten further around his waist, “I know.” 

 

“I couldn’t do this without you.” It’s not an _I love you,_ but the way that Harry holds him makes it feel like one. 

 

**

 

A couple of days pass uneventfully. They go to work, Harry steals cars, and they all meet up again, at night, for dinner and homework. Jade becomes a more and more constant presence which makes Louis smile, hide his face in Harry’s shoulder and giggle with his own memories of his first boyfriend. 

 

For a little while, things are okay. 

 

**

 

Ernest is teething lethargically at Louis’ finger, fever hot, red faced, sweating despite the fact that he isn’t wearing any clothes. He hasn’t been able to go to sleep yet, and it’s sometime after ten. Way too late for him to be awake. Louis feels a brief, splitting pang of guilt, followed by the ache that always lodges in his throat when he isn’t quite sure what to do: _mom mom mom_ like a pendulum swinging through his chest, shattering his ribs. 

 

Pathetic, whimpering, Ernest clutches more tightly to the single digit of Louis’ that he’s got. He keeps twitching in Louis’ hold, not getting cooler despite the open window, despite the medicine he took a half an hour ago. 

 

It’s when Ernest goes silent, eyes drifting closed as Louis rocks him gently around the room, that panic catches its fingers around Louis’ throat. Ernest is never quiet: he’s always burbling happily, cooing excitedly, constantly in motion. 

 

“Georgia?” Louis calls, as quietly as he can manage. His own voice sounds tremulous to his own ears. 

 

There are new marks along her neck, just faintly, when she peeks into the hallway, “What’s wrong?” 

 

Louis wishes he knew. Ernest is too hot? Ernest isn’t himself? He wishes that they had health insurance, that he had money in the squirrel fund besides the food money and the bill money. He wishes they didn’t live in the south side of Chicago, and that he could leave the home without fearing for his siblings, that he could take his sick brother to the doctor without worrying about who wasn’t going to eat for that decision. Georgia enters the hallway silently. Louis doesn’t jerk when she lays her hand on the baby’s forehead, but Ernest gives a feeble, shapeless cry.

 

“He’s warm.” 

 

“He won’t go to bed, and he won’t sleep, and he isn’t eating, and he wouldn’t even drink water— I think I have to take him in, G.” 

 

She nods, once, precise. “What do you want me to do?” 

 

Cradling the squirming, warm baby closer to his chest, Louis debates. He doesn’t have a car, and the city busses are dirty, carry more harmful germs that could make Ernest worse. They, obviously, don’t have money for a taxi. He could ask Zayn, but he was insufferable, spent a pathetic few days banging on their door every time someone even thought about mentioning Harry’s name.

 

“Call your boy,” Georgia murmurs. 

 

Louis doesn’t have time to tell her that he doesn’t know if he can, doesn’t know if Harry’s in a place where that’s possible, doesn’t know where Harry is because he wasn’t home for dinner. He shakes his head, gingerly handing Ernest to her. At the cold air, cold clothing, against his skin, he sighs happily, settling into Georgia’s chest as she coos to him. Louis’ fingers are shaking when he takes out his phone. 

 

It rings twice before Jesy picks up. 

 

“Hello?” 

 

“Ernest has a high fever,” Louis whispers, running a hand through his hair, “He won’t eat or drink, and he’s not making noise.” 

 

Jesy’s breathing, echoing back at him through the tinny static of the phone, speeds, “Okay. Did you give him Motrin to bring the fever down?” 

 

“An hour ago. I tried a cool bath. I opened a window. He’s not— He’s not _himself,_ Jess.” 

 

“Has he thrown up?” 

 

“No,” Louis replies, “What does that even—”

 

“Is he alert?” Jesy cuts him off. 

 

It feels monumentous, terrifying, when Louis murmurs, “No.” 

 

They end up in Zayn’s car, speeding to the hospital. Jesy has Ernest pressed to her chest in the back, constantly speaking softly to him, checking his forehead and his heart rate at intervals that Louis is too nervous to be sure of. Zayn’s fingers twitch against the wheel like he’s itching for a cigarette. The car is silent. Louis thinks, absurdly, of the moments before Harry comes: the stillness, the anticipation. He feels like he’s worried about a thousand things, unable to focus on a single one It feels like he was getting ready for work a million years ago, and now they’re all here, speeding towards the ER. 

 

The emergency room is a different kind of tense. Everyone is wrapped up in their own kinds of trauma: the young boy who cut his leg open playing baseball, the girls clutching their stomachs and their sides, the older man who has had a stroke, as he bravely informs the receptionist, and was sent here by his physician. Louis takes Ernest from Jesy and sinks into a chair at the far end, Zayn at his side while Jesy gets papers.

 

Ernest doesn’t make even a little peep as they settle side by side. In an effort to still his panic, Louis buries his head into the crown of Ernest’s hair, breathes in his familiar, clean, baby scent: “You are my sunshine,” Louis murmurs, “You make me happy when skies are grey.” The song is a holdover from when Jay was alright, when she was interested in being their mother. He’s heard it a billion times. They’ve all heard it. Ernest doesn’t move. 

 

Zayn’s hand rests firm and comforting along Louis’ shoulder as he sings to Ernest.

 

Jesy brings the papers back eventually. She sinks into the chair at Louis’ side to begin the basic information. They stay silent, trapped in their own bubble of anxiety, Louis holding Ernest too tightly, charting the minute flickers of his face, the clenching and releasing of his grip of Louis’ finger. 

 

“Lou,” Jesy whispers, “What do I put for— Do I put down Jay?”

 

“She’s not here,” Louis says, angry at her absence, “She’s not his mom.” 

 

Zayn makes a small sound of protest, “She’s his mom, Lou, that’s not gonna change—”

 

“Yeah, love, Z is right. We’ve gotta be honest—”

 

“We don’t have insurance either, right? Maybe Jay will allow for—”

 

“Maybe? How many alcoholic parents are living on the south side of Chicago? Zayn, _come on—”_

 

He’s not listening to them, if he’s being honest. There is too much going on in his head: panic about Ernest warring with panic about Harry, everything embarrassingly urgent and pressing on his throat. He’s not sure he can do this for much longer, not sure how bad Ernest actually is. There’s an irrational part of him that wants to go up to the nurse’s station and _demand_ help, although Ernest is probably not the worst off in this room.

 

His breathing has sped without his permission. 

 

“Babe.” Jesy whispers. 

 

Louis jolts. He’s got Ernest tucked up to his chest way too tightly, everything about his posture defensive and tense.

 

Zayn’s fingers pry his grip off of Ernest coaxingly as Jesy slides him into her own lap. He’s blinking owlishly, eyes wet, overwhelmed as he’s been so often lately. He just got Harry back, he was just getting things back together. Why do things always fall apart right when Louis is trying his hardest to hold them together? 

 

“Go call him,” Jesy murmurs, “Please just go call Harry.” 

 

“He didn’t come home,” Louis whispers. 

 

Zayn places a comforting hand in the center of Louis’ tense spine, “Call him. Ernest isn’t going anywhere, Lou.” 

 

“What if—”

 

“Please.” Jesy says, her wide brown eyes trained on Louis. 

 

Guilty, ashamed of himself, Louis rises from the hard plastic chair he’s been sat in. There are plenty of quiet corners for him to call Harry in, but he wanders for a bit, tracing a path through cold corridors and impersonal waiting rooms until he’s back at the beige, warm entrance. Things aren’t so urgent here. 

 

There, he presses Zayn’s phone to his ear with shaking fingers, leaned back against a wall.

 

“Hello? Zayn, why’re you—”

 

“Hey,” Louis says as evenly as he can manage. 

 

“Louis?” Harrys’ voice changes immediately, “Lou, what’s going on? Why aren’t you calling from— Did you give your phone to Georgia again—”

 

“Ernest’s got a really high fever,” Louis whispers, “We’re at the hospital, because he wasn’t— He’s not responsive.” The same fear as before lodges itself firmly in Louis’ chest, “I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t— I was so scared—”

 

“Hey,” Harry cuts him off gently, “Hey, Louis. You’re alright, okay? You’re okay, you did the perfect thing. You’re such a good big brother to those kids. You did the exact right thing.” 

 

“I didn’t know where you were,” Louis whimpers next, staring hard at his feet. He’s exhausted. Work will be pissed that he missed, and he might lose his job. Harry’s not anywhere that Louis can touch him. Ernest is sick in a way that Louis can’t quantify or help with. Everything is all fucked up, and he can’t do a single thing about any of it. He tries to take a deep breath, “I just—”

 

He tries to turn his face away from the phone as he swallows back on the tears in his throat.

 

“I was heading home, Lou, I’m sorry it went late. I couldn’t do anything about it, the police were—” 

 

Louis doesn’t stop to ponder why Harry has begun referring to his house as home. Instead, he says, “I’m so scared, Haz.” 

 

“Where are you?” 

 

“We’re at Holy Cross.”

 

“Lou, I’ll be there in ten minutes, okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Louis whispers, “Please.”

 

Harry hangs up to drive, and Louis collapses more heavily against the wall. For a few moments, he allows himself the luxury of a deep breath. His body feels tired in every way imaginable, heavy and cumbersome as he moves back to the ER. He never gets a break, _never,_ and there are days when he can’t imagine keeping this up for eighteen more years. He’ll be almost forty before Doris and Ernest are ready to leave the house. Is he still going to be working these crappy, barely minimum wage jobs? Is he going to be able to support any of the kids through college? What about when Georgia leaves next year?

 

The ER crowd has thinned a bit when he goes to sit back by Zayn and Jesy. Their heads are tilted together as they watch Ernest blink blearily in the too bright lights. Louis wishes he had the appropriate words to adequately thank them as he cuddles into Zayn’s warm side and closes his eyes to try to stop the racing of his thoughts. 

 

When he wakes up, it’s to the rhythmic brushing of Harry’s thumb over the nape of his neck, a touch that is possessive and soft against Louis’ skin. He jolts hard, looking at the empty seats next to him, turns wide, anxious eyes on Harry. 

 

“Jesy lied. Said she’s Georgia. They’ve got Ernest in back now. If they have any news, they’ll text us.” Harry holds up his cellphone, eyes bleary, bags dark under them. “Zayn said you needed a bit of a rest.” 

 

Louis wants to resent Zayn but he’s too tired and too scared for feelings like that. The sleepy familiar feeling of collapsing against Harry, falling into his body, has gone, been replaced by anxiety and fear. Louis teethes along his lower lip, sends a quick _please help Ernest be alright_ up to anyone who happens to be listening to the quiet, poor boy in the Holy Cross ER.

 

Harry’s palms fit wide over his cheeks, his eyes scanning Louis’ face, “You’re so strong.” 

 

Louis’ laugh feels like sleep grit and a night spent in the ER with his little brother. 

 

“You _are,”_ Harry insists. He always touches Louis so carefully, and tonight is no different. Even in the ER, his touches are slow and deliberate, coax Louis into layering his hands over Harry’s on his own face, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be here sooner.” 

 

“I didn’t tell you,” he turns his face in apology, kisses Harry’s palm. 

 

“You shouldn’t have had to.” 

 

“My kids aren’t—”

 

Harry’s thumb under his chin directs his gaze to Harry’s focused, green eyes, “I care about your siblings, Lou.” 

 

“You shouldn’t have to—”

 

“I want them to be,” and with Nick, Louis didn’t believe it. With Stan, Louis couldn’t believe it. With Harry, Harry’s wild curls and his wide eyes and the silly dimples lodged in his cheeks, Louis believes him, “I want them to be my responsibility so badly, Louis.” 

 

Louis opens his mouth to object but closes it. He doesn’t want to fight about this tonight. “I’m so tired, Haz.” 

 

“I know,” Harry opens his arms. 

 

They curl up together in the ER, silent and waiting. Louis mouths over the soft, dark ink spread in a small, hopeful looking sparrow below Harry’s collarbone. He kisses it again and again while Harry’s fingers dip into the hair at the nape of his neck. When Jesy and Zayn come out with Ernest, nearing one thirty in the morning, medication smuggled out under Jesy’s coat from a kind nurse, Louis sends up another little _thank you_ to whoever listened to him. They drive home in near silence, Harry and Louis getting out of the car with Ernest wrapped in two blankets. He gets tucked back into his crib with no fuss. 

 

**

 

It’s two in the morning, he’s spent the last few hours at the ER, but Louis has to get the living room clean. There are toys strewn across the ripped couch, blankets puddled haphazardly around the legs of the table, the television humming lowly from where Fizzy or Lottie left it on in their haste to get to bed. His bones feel heavy, even as he bends to tug a pillow out from under a coloring book. The knots in his spine are permanent at this point. He doesn’t hate his life, doesn’t even resent his parents for how _horribly_ they’ve messed everything up. There’s just something insanely _lonely_ about wandering around the living room, exhausted, trailing his fingers over all of the toys that his siblings have spent all day playing with a wondering what moments he’s missed because he was too busy doing something else.

 

“I love you.” 

 

Louis feels stripped bare. Everything has been building up for so long, and Harry has been so good to him. He stills, his hand around the leg of a stuffed teddy bear that Doris has taken to teething along. When he turns to face Harry, who is leaning against the dirty doorjamb between the living room and the kitchen, he feels like he’s gone to battle against an entire army empty handed.

 

“Are you going to leave?” 

 

Harry shakes his head without hesitating. 

 

It’s Harry against his entire life, against every single person who’s ever walked out because they couldn’t handle him or his siblings or because he was just a little twinky faggot that they were using to get off. Louis doesn’t make a habit of trusting his feelings. 

 

His voice wavers around his nearly silent, “Are you sure?” 

 

In the white and blue glow of the television, Harry looks otherworldly when he strides towards Louis. The teddy bear that is still the slightest bit spit wet from Doris presses into Louis’ sternum as he fights the urge to bury his face in Harry’s neck to hide from the discussion that he _knows_ they have to have. His life has no room in it for unknowns right now. Palms wide over the curvature of Louis’ hips, lips against his temple, Harry murmurs, “Positive, little love.” 

 

Soft mouth against his forehead, the tip of his nose, the apples of his cheeks, just barely fogging up his glasses, coaxing and careful. Harry smells like cigarettes and the sterility of hospital rooms, but he feels like safety. Teddy bear falling out of his hands to _plonk_ on the floor, Louis arches up. They don’t kiss right away. After everything that has happened, Louis just needs to _breathe_ for a moment. He isn’t sure what he’s feeling, what he’s thinking, isn’t even positive he could define love with a dictionary in his hands. 

 

Harry whispers, “I love you” again.

 

Louis licks his lips. 

 

“Everyone leaves,” his voice has gone waver-y, thin like it does right before he breaks down. Louis can’t remember the last time he felt gentled enough to let go and just cry, “You don’t know that you’re going to want this in a year—”

 

One of Harry’s hands fits itself to his cheek, “I want _you.”_

 

No one ever just wants Louis for himself. He doesn’t know, even when Harry kisses him, how to say it back. _Love_ is one of the scariest things Louis has ever dealt with, and his mom is manic-depressive, refusing to get treatment. Harry’s tongue dips into his mouth. Louis tries not to be embarrassed by the little whimper he lets out, tries not to think too hard about how Harry’s thumb moves back and forth across his cheekbone like he _knows_ Louis can’t do without the assurance that what he wants is alright.

 

They stand in the doorway of the living room, Harry’s hands wide over his body, covering all of the soft parts. Louis isn’t kissing him anymore, because kissing Harry feels like being rubbed raw. They breathe together: mouths open, lips glancing off each other as Harry turns his face to nuzzle into Louis’ temple. 

 

“Off,” Louis whispers, fingers spread wide over Harry’s spine under his shirt. 

 

Harry’s abdomen jumps under his touch as he slides his hands over the ridges there. There is something insanely comforting about the huge butterfly inked on his diaphragm, the ferns that Louis kissed back at the tattoo parlor, the _birds._ He’s still Harry, still running his hands so warmly over Louis’ body. Together, their fingers twined, they shimmy down Louis’ pants and briefs.

 

His body isn’t what it used to be. Track was a luxury during high school that he can’t afford now, doesn’t have the time for. His thighs hold all of this extra weight, right near his groin, and his bum is _enormous._ Fucking doesn’t make him feel self-conscious like this does.Harry, fingers whispering just barely over all of that skin, mouthing against his temple, whispers, “You are so beautiful.” 

 

Louis turns his face into Harry’s shoulder, “Don’t have to convince me. I’m a sure thing.” 

 

Harry, so strong, hitches him up to carry them over to the couch. Legs together, Louis’ thighs on either side, Harry catches his face. There is no way he can look away. Harry isn’t high, isn’t drunk, isn’t on _anything._

 

His honesty has always made Louis feel so bare. 

 

“You,” a kiss on his temple, “are,” a kiss on his right cheek, “so,” a kiss to his left cheek, Louis reddening under the attention, “beautiful, Lou. The most beautiful boy—”

 

“Kiss me.” 

 

Louis can’t listen to him when he gets like that. As Harry’s hands find his bum, sink into the meat there, Louis wonders if anyone has ever felt like they could possibly _deserve_ that level of devotion from someone. He’s not worthy of it, never has been, never will be, and Harry groans, low and long, when Louis arches forward, to press them together. Their lips disconnect with a sloppy, wet sound. 

 

“Shh, kids are asleep.” 

“ _Fuck, Lou,”_ Harry’s cock is big, thick, pulsing against the zipper of his jeans. It’s not just because Harry has confessed his love tonight that Louis wants to be fucked. He doesn’t even have to say it. 

 

There is something intensely personal and real about Harry popping a finger into his mouth until it is wet enough. His face is all of these jagged shadows of light and dark as he focuses intently on Louis’ face, watching for any sign of discomfort as he moves his hand down. Slick, wet, Harry pets back and forth over his hole. Louis slumps forward, forehead pressed to Harry’s. Louis loves getting fingered, although he never actually has the time for it. 

 

“C’mon, Haz.” 

 

“Don’t wanna hurt you,” even as his finger slides up into Louis. He doesn’t move it, allows Louis to rock his hips forward and backward until he can bear the stretch. Louis gets lost in it: he bucks his hips up, cock beading precome onto the shirt of Harry’s that he’s wearing, body bowed to find his prostate. When Harry nudges him over on the couch, he whines. “Babe, ‘s not wet enough. Need lube.” 

 

“No,” Louis feels needy like he never does. Harry can’t go find lube or the spell will be broken. He might remember, when he sees the crayon on the walls, the toys in the upstairs hallway, that he doesn’t want this. Louis can’t deal with that possibility right now. 

 

Something like trepidation surges in his chest when Harry presses a hand into the center of his spine, settling Louis’ front against the back of the couch as he sinks to his knees in the gap between the furniture and the coffee table. Louis tries to focus on the warmth of Harry’s breath against his shoulder blades, Harry’s lips dragging across the ridges of them as his hands find Louis’ hips. 

 

Harry’s lips move down, down, down, over the bumps of his spine. Again, because he somehow got to _know_ Louis, despite all of the bullshit in both of their lives, his thumbs work in small circles over the meaty parts of Louis’ hips. His cock aches, his heart is racing, and Louis has no idea how to properly begin to feel all of the things in his chest. He _can’t._ Lips meet the top of his bum, rob him of the ability to properly _breathe._

 

“You’re alright,” Harry murmurs, thumbs lowering until he can spread Louis out. 

 

Louis arches forward, into the ratty green and red plaid couch, hips canting for friction. It has always been easier to just feel things with his body and refuse to feel them with his heart. Harry kisses around his own, huge hands. Then licks, tentative and small, across Louis’ hole. 

 

He whimpers. The girls are sleeping upstairs. Doris and Ernest breathe evenly through their baby monitor speakers. Louis balls his fists up into the fabric of the couch to somehow attempt to contain the energy rocketing up his spine. 

 

Harry eats him out tenderly, like it’s all designed to make Louis feel breathless and terrified, his own _I love you_ a constant threat. He’s thorough with it: wet and slippery, Harry’s own breathing magnified. Harry licks flat over his hole until it’s wet enough for his single finger. Louis’ breathing is too loud in the living room, but he arches back, thrusting his bum into Harry’s face. Nipping at Louis’ rim, grinning against his skin, Harry pulls him back, kissing down to the skin behind his balls and _sucking._

 

Eventually, under the onslaught of Harry’s tongue, he relaxes into it. His arousal is a constant hum under his skin, thrumming up and down his spine, spiking when Harry finally rubs a second finger against his prostate. He’s careful to stay quiet, even as he rubs his cock into the couch, always conscious of his siblings around.

 

When he’s humping Harry’s hand, greedy for the feeling of being full, Harry finally kneels beside him on the couch. Louis scrambles over his lap, feeling ungraceful and silly, drowning in Harry’s _Hot N’ Hard_ tee shirt. Fingers still tucked up in Louis’ bum, Harry leans forward.

 

“Kiss me,” he whispers, “Lou, kiss me.” 

 

Louis frames his face and kisses him on the upper lip, on his lower lip, relents when Harry’s mouth falls open on a groan when Louis jolts forwards at a particularly hard jab to his prostate. They breathe into each other’s space, panting in harshly. Harry smells like their home, like stale coffee and the cheap soap that Louis buys, under the hospital smell. 

 

“Get your cock out,” Louis murmurs, “C’mon, babe.” 

They jostle around together: Louis’ hands fumbling with Harry’s zipper frantically now, Harry not so much fingering him as scissoring his fingers. “C’mon, c’mon,” breathed into the air between them, Louis too warm and _loved_ to feel properly embarrassed about how badly he wants it. The second before he lowers himself over Harry’s cock, slicked with both of their spits, Harry catches his face.

 

“I love you so bad, Lou.” 

 

No one’s ever said it like that. In lieu of answering, he lowers himself (not nearly wet enough) onto Harry’s cock. It burns, Harry’s zipper bites into his thigh, Harry’s fingers biting into his hips, arms wrapped double around Louis, Louis’ arms around Harry’s neck, buried in his curls.

 

When they finally start fucking, it’s slower than Louis has ever let them go. He rotates his hips side to side, just to feel the pull of Harry’s thick cock. Something in his chest rises and soars to the pitch of Harry’s moans, pride and affection swelling in his chest for this crazy boy from the north side who still hasn’t left yet, despite having every reason to. He whimpers when Harry finally nails his prostate, hands tightening in Harry’s hair, Harry’s hands digging bruises into his side. Louis thinks _I love you I love you I love you_ but stays silent. His heart is running in his chest, Harry’s lips hovering over his cheekbones, kissing randomly. 

 

Louis comes first, grinding filthily against Harry’s stomach, Harry’s cock so deep inside of him he can’t breathe. Harry follows, lips pressed to the very tip of Louis’ nose, whispering, “I need you so much, Lou, need you all of the time.” 

 

**

 

Fizzy’s cold fingers prodding against the nape of his neck wake Louis up better than the small, almost purring snores that Harry is rumbling out under his ear. 

 

“Lou,” she repeats, voice high and strained, “Lou, Lou, Lou.” 

 

“Wha’s it?” Thankfully, the black sheets are pooled around his and Harry’s hips, nothing too incriminating hanging out. Louis rubs his hands over his eyes, blinking to try to accommodate to the too bright light so he can talk to Fizzy. “What’s the matter, love?” 

 

Fizzy, teething anxiously along her lower lip, whispers, “Mom’s back.” 

 

 _That_ jolts Louis into sitting up. His wide eyes focus in on Fizzy’s fear, ears perked for sounds coming from the rest of the house. Everything is deceptively silent. From the baby monitor that Harry picked up off of the coffee table last night, Doris and Ernest snore softly, just baby snores like Harry. His heart relaxes a fraction in his chest. 

 

Fizzy rests a hand on his wrist, “She wouldn’t stop knocking, Lou. I know you said not to let her in, but she’s our _mom—”_

 

“That’s alright,” Louis brushes wispy, honey blond hair off of her forehead. Behind him, Harry has begun shifting his legs in the telltale sign of his wakefulness. Louis doesn’t turn around to talk to him, doesn’t say anything, prays that Harry will get the message that this is not any of his business right now. Under the covers, a hand slides warmly under his thigh, kneading into the skin. “You did the right thing, Fizz. Thank you so much.” 

 

Smiling slightly, Fizzy says, “She’s asleep on the couch. Is that alright?” 

 

“Yes, of course, love,” Louis swings his legs over the side of the bed, reaching down to the floor for his pair of black boxer briefs from the night before. His attempts to shimmy them on are thwarted by his position sitting on the bed, but he manages, rising to yank back on Harry’s shirt. Sentimentality does not normally have room in Louis’ life. Harry’s shirt still makes him feel _better._ Protected. “Would you like to help me get the rest of the girls up? Then we can have breakfast before school?” 

 

Fizzy’s pajama pants are too short, reveal the small butterfly bones in her ankles. She gazes down at her feet, whispers, “Will mom still be here when we get home?” 

 

Louis doesn’t plan on ever letting Jay back into their home, if he’s being honest. Instead, he murmurs, “Love, you know how she is. You can’t count on her to stay.” 

 

From the bed, pointed, Harry stretches. Fizzy’s eyes land on the butterfly on his chest, the birds up by his collarbones. She’s always been fascinated by Harry. He’s new, doesn’t fit into the crappy world where they grew up. His Burberry coat hanging in their front closet is a shiny glimpse into things that they’ve never had before.

 

Harry must grin his goofy smile, all too much teeth and crinkly eyes, because Fizzy laughs, “What’re you looking at?”

 

Fizzy points, giggles, “You!” 

 

When Louis looks, Harry is reclined back against the pillows, hands behind his head in the picture of innocence. He brings so much life into this bland, dirty house. Harry’s eyes go soft when Louis turns to gaze at him, his teeth sinking into his lower lip. Louis wants him so badly his chest aches.

 

“Go get the girls up, Fizz, okay? We’ll be downstairs making breakfast.” 

 

“Good morning, Harry,” she says, a giggle still running in the undercurrent of her voice, before she leaves the room. They hear her open up her own door, the gentle way she asks Lottie to wake up. Fizzy is a good girl. 

 

Louis smiles, warm and private, down at the naked, curly haired boy sprawled across the bed.

 

Harry brings a hand down to his hip, scratching over one of the ferns, before he makes grabby hands at Louis. “C’mere. Just a minute.” 

 

They don’t have time for it, never do in the mornings. Louis crawls back into the bed anyway. He settles heavily across the cradle of Harry’s naked hips, hands framing his face. Everything in his chest and mind has scrambled as he thinks about Jay, torn between the part of himself that wants her to leave and _never come back,_ the angry part, and the part that is her son. She’s one of the worst people in Louis’ life, and he can’t even _blame her for it._ Bipolar disorder has its hand around her throat. Louis could never compete with that, not after Dan died.

 

“Hey,” Harry’s hands have slid to cover his, “Louis.” 

 

“ _Harry,”_ his voice has gone reedy again, like last night. A sob rips out of his throat before he can swallow it back down.

 

Lips plush against his skin, Harry kisses over his wrist, kisses a path up his forearm, kisses the musky joint of his elbow, kisses across the _far away_ inked over his bicep, sits up entirely and buries his face in Louis’ neck as his entire body curls around Louis’. Harry makes him feel like he’s been shattered into a million pieces. 

 

“You are so strong,” Harry murmurs into his throat, “Never met anyone stronger than you, babe.” 

 

Louis doesn’t feel strong. He feels dangerous, careening, like a rollercoaster about to tip off its own tracks. 

 

Large hands gentle along the cradle of bone under his eyes, Harry steers Louis into looking at him. He’s tired, because they didn’t sleep much last night, eyes puffy with dark bags under them. His lower lip is still swollen from Louis’ teeth. Louis can see where he bit him the second time he came on his cock. Louis has never wanted someone to stay so badly. To hide the glassiness of his eyes, Louis closes them. 

 

“Listen to me,” Harry’s voice has gone urgent, “You can do this. You are so strong, Lou, and I— ‘M not going anywhere.” Harry knows how angry Louis gets at himself for actively _wanting_ something. Where his hands are settled against Harry’s chest, they curl into fists, “I’ll be right here. Right.” A kiss to Louis’ left eyelid, “here.” The right one. 

 

Louis surges forward, blindly, until Harry gets the hint and connects their mouths. Louis is frantic, urgent, wants to sink his hands into Harry and never let go. Harry is slow, doesn’t let Louis work himself into a fever pitch, strokes along his cheekbone with one hand while the other drops to his bruised hipbone. 

 

“ _Harry,”_ Louis whimpers out, hands fisted in the collar of his shirt.

 

“I know,” he says, “I know, Lou.” 

 

They climb out of the bed together, after that. Harry yanks on some old track sweats that are too short for him just to make Louis laugh and ask him _when the flood’s coming in?_ Harry, hand around his wrist, bends down and kisses his temple instead of answering. Louis doesn’t have to do anything or say anything; Harry lingers for a few more seconds before he leaves to go downstairs. Moments later, after the creaky stair, the kitchen erupts into _yeah!_ and _can we help?_ Louis tries not to get teary eyed over his boyfriend helping him get the kids to school on time while he kicks Jay out. 

 

As he slowly walks down the stairs, Louis can feel his heart threatening to burst out of his chest. It’s his _mom._ He shouldn’t have to be the one to tell her to get help or not come back. That kind of ultimatum shouldn’t be something that he has to even think about. Trailing his fingers over the dirty white walls, Louis thinks about the last five years and wonders how he made it. Absurdly, when he finally sees Jay, he thinks about the last time she came home and saw the kids. 

 

She’d been drunk, snuggled up to Lottie and Fizzy on the couch while Georgia smoked in the doorway, long, thin fingers caught around the joint like she had no other way to stay. Louis thinks about how hard it is to stay: thinks about how badly he wants Harry to stay, feels guilty about not needing his mom but needing this silly, quirky, _beautiful_ boy from the North Side. Jay’s hair is ratty, tied back in a frazzled ponytail. All things considered, she just looks exhausted. Not really any different. Her skin has always looked weathered; her hands have always looked older than they were. Now, she has the greying hair at her temples to match. Crashing loudly after that thought is the _Harry fucked me on that couch last night._

 

Louis settles onto the coffee table. The sounds from the kitchen have turned into _goodbye, Harry_ ’s and _can’t be late!,_ rumbling under the crashing sound of the washer. Louis thinks of the girls. Jay has done nothing but let them down, has never been able to even fake interest in being their mother. He reaches out for Jay’s shoulder before he can talk himself out of it. 

 

Jay snuffles, turns her face into the couch cushions. 

  
“Jay.” Louis says, voice more tremulous than he’d like, “Jay, wake up.” 

 

She blinks, bleary eyed like Lottie when Louis has to get her up earlier than normal, scrubs a hand over her eyes in a way that makes Louis think of Ernest. It’s easy for Louis to read the tell tale signs of a depressive episode on her: the welts on her wrists under the rubber bands she’s always kept there, the bags under her eyes, the sheepish way she smiles at Louis.

 

“I’ve missed you so much, baby,” is the first thing out of her mouth.

 

Louis honestly has nothing to say to that. He tightens the grip that his balled hands have on the sweats he’s wearing. It takes him a moment, when she looks so frail, to remember what he’s doing here, but then the sounds of plates clanging in the kitchen filter in, the rumble of the washer, Harry’s voice low as he hums. That’s it, really. All Louis needs. 

 

“Lou-Lou,” she sits up, creakily. Her bones crack, her weight shifting as she attempts to find some type of comfortable position. The pillow creases on her cheek remind him of before Dan, when she’d sleep off her depression instead of going on benders. “I really have missed you so—”

 

“Can you please cut the _bullshit?”_

 

Everything goes silent in the kitchen. 

 

“I’m back,” Jay says, voice tremulous, “I came back because I missed you.” 

 

He’s shaking his head before she’s even done. Jay never comes back for long, and she _never_ comes back just for them. “What do you want, Jay?” 

 

“What? I—I want to be with you guys,” she’s reaching across the space between them, trying to settle her fingers on Louis’ kneecap, “I want to be your mom—”

 

“I already asked you to the cut the bullshit.” 

 

Her mouth flounders open.

 

“I’m not going to ask again.” 

 

Before his eyes, her demeanor changes. Squared shoulders, hands placed on Louis’ knees, head tilted to the side in a mocking imitation of a disappointed parent. “Is that anyway to speak to your mother?” 

 

Louis still needs to be reminded that it’s alright to not want someone in his life if they’re toxic, even if they’re _your mother._ Being someone’s parent means nothing about their capacity to care for you or your needs. It’s been five years, it’s been so many hours that Louis’ lost count, it’s been tears and fighting and sucking cock to make the rent. 

 

Louis laughs, low and pained, “Fuck you.” 

 

“Excuse me?” Jay presses a hand to her chest, “What did you just say?” Her eyes are wide, trained on him.

 

“ _Fuck you,”_ everything narrows to the way that he stands from the coffee table. He hasn’t been strong enough to leave her yet. His thighs are trembling, his hands are clenching and unclenching on air. All he can picture is the way that Harry’s throat looked tipped along the back of the couch as he’d sucked bruises into the tail of his bird. “When you start acting like my mother, I’ll treat you like it.” 

 

Jay looks washed out and strung out in the harsh too brightness of early morning.

 

He’s supposed to be fighting his mother, but all Louis wants to do is curl up into the place where Harry’s arms box him into the corner of the kitchen and kiss Harry until his lips are swollen red and tingle every time he drinks his coffee. 

 

“I came _back for you,”_ Jay says, her finger shaking when she jabs it at him, “I came back for y—”

 

“I stopped believing that when I was ten.” 

 

“Why else would I—”

 

“Whatever the fuck it is you think we can give you, we can’t.” Louis gestures at the shambles around him. They have the same rickety couch they’ve always had. The girls get new toys and clothes when Louis is lucky enough to land a full time job for any stretch of time, and the babies haven’t ever had new baby toys. Georgia is good about helping him out when he needs it. They still have no money more times than not. “We’re just as broke as we’ve always been, Jay. You should _know_ that.” 

 

“Is that why—” she shakes her head, “I’ve been such a bad—I didn’t mean—” When she presses a hand over her mouth to hold back her sobs, Louis tries not to feel anything.

 

He crosses his arms over his chest to protect the jackrabbiting of his heart. 

 

“I want to be your mother again,” Jay says like being a mother is something you can choose to be or not, like being a mother is a job offer. 

 

In the absurdly bright morning, bum sore from Harry’s cock, head throbbing, heart hammering too quickly against his ribs, Louis thinks about the last five years. He has nothing but hatred and pity and sadness for the wrecked woman clutching her own chest as she cries on the couch. Louis used to spend every night curled up around Doris and Ernest, trying to quiet them only so he could cry some. There is no redemption here. She doesn’t get help, doesn’t get on meds, doesn’t get better. She never does. Jay manufactures promises like she can weave them a better life out of thin air and empty words.

 

Louis is fucking _exhausted._

 

He walks around the couch slowly. Jay’s eyes track the movement. It doesn’t sink in until Louis’ hand reaches for the cold metal of the door handle and pulls it open, “I need you to leave.” 

 

“Baby—” Jay’s got her arms outstretched again. 

 

“Leave,” Louis repeats, voice firm, staring at her with unblinking eyes. “Get out.” 

 

She’s unsteady from whatever is left over in her system. Not so much like Harry’s new born baby deer stumbling as drunk reeling, Jay almost careens into the wall. Louis debates reaching out for her when she nearly goes over one of Doris’ toys. He refrains, hip against the door. Jay’s eyes are watery, misty when they land on him.

 

Louis doesn’t let himself give in to that. _Just one more, love, alright? We can talk about it tomorrow morning. I promise I’ll stop tomorrow._

 

“Please,” Jay’s voice has gone low and ragged, burns in the space between them, miles and miles, “Please, baby. Lou, I promise you—I’ll be better, I swear. Baby, don’t make me leave, I won’t do it—”

 

She’s a skipping record caught on the same damn track. Louis shakes his head and pleads with a god he’s never believed in for a bit of strength. He can’t cry. “Get out, Jay.” 

 

The door is digging into his hip, even as Jay collapses against the front wall. “Please, _no._ I don’t have—”

 

Her voice has begun to irritate him so much that he wants to claw his own skin off. “It’s not my fault!” Louis yells. 

 

For a long moment of silence, everything stops. Louis wasn’t expecting to yell, because he never lets himself yell. It’s the small part of Jay that he keeps locked up so tightly that no one even knows it exists except for Louis, and he doesn’t want it, doesn’t acknowledge it, doesn’t let it ever breathe. Louis will be better than their parents.

 

Jay’s fingers catch his elbow, “I can change.” 

 

“You fucking can’t,” Louis grits out. His mouth tastes like blood, “Get the _fuck out and don’t come back.”_

 

When Jay knows that she’s lost, she becomes useless. Even as she walks out the door, she’s pleading with him, quiet and pitiful. Louis wishes he had something more to say or something more to show her. Instead, he’s got fogged up glasses because he’s been crying and the heaving of his own chest, a body that aches. He’s so old now. Louis has given every single thing he had to her. Parents are supposed to give to their children, and her fingers are still caught around the doorjamb, but Louis pries them off and closes the door, because he can’t break down until she’s gone.

 

Louis _breaks down._

 

Collapsing back against the battered turquoise front door, Louis puts his head into his hands and begins to sob. His body is sliding down, paint flaking against the tee shirt he threw on, when Harry’s arms wrap around his waist. He should be strong. Louis usually allows himself one sob, one exhale of frustration before he wraps it up and moves on. 

 

Harry sinks to the abused wooden floor with Louis, cradling him into his lap, against his chest. This time, Louis doesn’t have to stifle his sobs. He buries his face in the juncture of Harry’s throat, not worrying about staining his shirt, not worried about any of the kids seeing him and _cries._ In the beginning, it is about his mom. She’s harmed him so much, and he still doesn’t forgive her, doesn’t know if he ever will. Harry’s fingers move up and down his spine slowly. Then, it’s about his siblings and how sorry he is for how badly things have been sometimes: not knowing if they could make house payments, not knowing when or if Jay would come back into their life. 

 

When he can’t cry anymore, when he feels tired and disgusting, when his hands have finally loosened from where he fisted them in Harry’s shirt, Louis tries to take a deep breath. He can’t. There are sirens roaring down the road outside the door, but Harry’s hands are spread wide over the place where his spine flares out into his bum. Louis nuzzles closer to him, breathes in the smell of breakfast and the soft, baby clean smell that Ernest and Doris always leave behind on Harry’s skin.

 

“I think you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met,” Harry murmurs into the wispy crown of his hair.

 

Louis curls closer to Harry’s chest. He used to think that he could disappear, if he tried hard enough, just like Wendy. He remembers, as Harry’s hands cup his face, the moment when Jay told him the truth about Neverland and again, when he was in high school, and he learned the truth about Peter Pan. 

 

_Peter Pan is dead. Neverland isn’t—He’s dead._

 

To put off having to see the disgusted look on Harry’s face, Louis closes his eyes. 

 

“ _Hey,”_ Harry drags the word out for longer than necessary, thumbs moving gently over Louis’ fever hot cheeks, “Look at me.” 

Louis shakes his head. 

 

“Please?” Harry kisses his lips, “Please?” He kisses Louis’ eyelids and the tip of his nose, the apples of his cheeks, the furrow on his forehead, “Please please _please?”_

 

Louis’ eyes flutter open to the vision of Harry gazing down at him with a dopey grin on his face. Without his permission, he begins to giggle, small and soft, before he brings a hand up to cover Harry’s mouth. The brightness of the sunlight falling through the window makes his eyes look verdant.  

 

“You’re such a _sap, god.”_ Louis gripes. Still, Harry’s love feels a bit like a glowing spark in his chest. It leaves him breathless and warm, basking in the way that Harry sees him, “I’ve got things to do, Harold.” 

 

“Stay with me,” Harry whines, tugging Louis closer with arms wrapped double around his waist. 

 

They don’t go anywhere for the longest time. Louis can’t remember the last time he let himself be held. In the doorway, against the cracking white paint, Harry’s back likely protesting, he holds Louis and doesn’t ask for a single thing. Harry’s arms are so strong around him, and when Louis begins to sniffle again, overwhelmed, Harry just kisses at the skin behind his ear and lets him cry in pathetic little hiccups against his throat. Louis thinks _I love you I love you I love you don’t leave_ and tries to clutch Harry’s biceps tight enough to tell him that when they eventually kiss. He feels snotty and swollen. Harry kisses him like he might come apart under the press of their lips. Louis thinks, sometimes, all of the time, that he might.

 

He falls asleep like that: cradled to Harry’s chest in the doorway.

 

**

 

That night, he wakes up to a full kitchen, voices rising and falling. He can pick out the individual strands of conversation: Zayn talking about how the Alibi just needs to be scrubbed down before the summer again, Niall agreeing on principle because it’s _Zayn,_ Georgia and Lottie and Fizzy talking to Harry about the merits of French braids versus fishtail braids, Ernest cooing excitedly at a quietly singing Liam, Jesy bustling around, keeping plates and glasses full, laughing when Zayn tugs her into a sloppy kiss. They’re his _family,_ and Harry brought food home from Louis’ favorite Chinese place. They’re all so important to Louis that he can’t breathe. 

 

He stands from the couch slowly, feeling groggy in the way that only serious crying can make him feel. The kitchen is packed. Louis feels, for a moment, so thankful that his chest threatens to expand to a limit that he can’t contain.

 

Harry sees him first. He doesn’t try to get into Louis’ space. From the doorway of the kitchen, smile stretched softly across his lips, he just watches. He’s too big for this house, for this _way of living,_ and sometimes it just makes Louis so, so sad that he’s chosen this for himself. Other times, like now, his heart swelling uncomfortably again, walking towards Harry, he just wants to pin them together, make sure he can never leave.

 

“Hey,” Harry says gently, “How’re you?” 

 

Louis fights against the urge to say _exhausted._ He’s got this beautiful, helpful, bigger than life boy six inches from his fingertips. His hands shake embarrassingly when he catches Harry’s, “I’m in love with you.” 

 

Ducking his face to hide his grin, he reels Louis in closer. They come together silently, privately, despite the party raging on behind them in the kitchen. Everyone must be able to see the way that Louis fingers clutch too tightly to Harry’s shoulders, and the way that Harry bends down to tuck himself into Louis’ neck, inhaling against his hairline. It’s _theirs,_ and Louis doesn’t feel even a bit guilty about whispering, “Love you so, so much,” into Harry’s ear.

 

That night, after everyone has helped tuck in the kids, after Jesy has pulled into a bone crushing hug, after Zayn has rolled himself and Niall a spliff, after Liam has begun to talk about how badly he wants to go camping this summer, after Harry has hidden _I love you’s_ in his neck and shoulder blade and cheekbone, they tumble into bed together. 

 

Harry tucks himself up against Louis’ side, kissing at his lower lip, while Louis holds on to Harry’s cheeks, fingers pressing white circles over the ridges of his cheekbones. He’s ruddy skinned and pink lipped and everything about him makes Louis ache. Louis can’t resist nipping at his lower lip just to _shush_ him so he doesn’t wake the kids. Harry is so careful: kisses along the seam of his lips before he begins to languidly fuck his tongue in and out, one hand on Louis’ hip, the other sifting gently through tawny strands of hair on the crown of his head. 

 

They don’t even take Louis’ sweats off: Harry fingers him under them, two fingers tucked in his hole, sucking on his tongue, steady and slow, heat coiling like a promise in the basket of Louis’ hips. Harry’s thumb moves back and forth over the skin behind his balls. Louis’ needy for it: parts his legs, fucks his hips down like he can force Harry’s cock into his body by force of will. Harry doesn’t fuck him. He gets off against Louis’ hip, rocking them together. Louis whimpers, oversensitive and _full,_ when Harry nudges a third lube sticky finger in. He’s thick, tugging at Louis’ rim, and he tries not to clench. Harry’s rings are cold when they hit Louis’ rim. His body can’t help seizing up: legs trying to close, cock caught under the waistband of his sweats, Harry’s fingers stretching apart inside of him because he can’t pull them out. Louis’ body won’t let him. 

 

“Close, babe?” Harry murmurs, tugging gently on Louis’ hair with his other hand.

 

“Yeah,” Louis pants, hole clenching down around Harry’s fingers at the roughness of his voice. He’s grasping Harry’s cheek bones like he can somehow anchor himself, “Please.” 

 

Harry’s eyes are glazed when he looks at Louis. Blown, green, so reverent that Louis squirms, knocking Harry’s fingers into his prostate. They both moan, low and high, Louis fighting to stay close to Harry’s body heat to escape how vulnerable he feels. Harry’s mentioned how much he loves Louis’ bum on so many occasions, but it still makes him feel overly self conscious and young and afraid to have someone finger him when he isn’t directly getting them off as a distraction. Harry’s fingers still again, rubbing back and forth over his prostate. 

 

“Look so beautiful, Lou,” Harry presses into his temple, nose buried in his hair, body angled more closely to Louis’, “Look so good like this. Wish you could see what I see.” 

 

“Harry,” he whimpers, arms coming up around Harry’s neck. Harry’s fingers are moving slowly, excruciating, between his legs, thick, rings popping past his rim when Harry begins to thrust in and out again. He’s fast, merciless, keeps his fingers curved up as they both listen to the slick sounds of lube and Louis’ hole fighting to keep him in.   

 

“Gonna come for me?” Harry asks, “Should see how you look like this.” Louis’ got hickies on his neck, bruises on his upper arms, paint on his shirt, worn sweats on. He doesn’t look like anything special, “So beautiful, Lou. The most beautiful boy ‘ve ever touched.” 

 

Louis can feel himself hurtling closer. “Har—”

 

Harry scoots them closer. He nudges his fourth finger, pinky, up against Louis’ hole. Louis locks up around it, mouth parting. Harry grins softly, his fingers moving faster, and rocking forward sends Louis’ cock rubbing up against his sweats. That’s it, really. Harry saying, “I love you so much, Lou,” is entirely unnecessary. 

 

Afterwards, they lay there silently. The sheets are pooled around their hips, the quilt kicked to the end of the bed. Louis remembers when he worried about Harry not wanting to sleep in his bed because it wasn’t luxurious enough or the thread count on the sheets wasn’t high enough. Now, he can’t imagine him anywhere else. He’s got on boxers, curls fanned across the pillow, eyelashes heavy and fluttering with his exhaustion. Louis wants to be able to give Harry even half of what Harry has given him. 

 

**

 

The next morning, Louis wakes up to an empty house. He sprawls out, the bed having gone cold since Harry woke up to go to work, stretching his arms above his head. The twinge in his hips and the faint burn of stubble and teeth against his neck makes him flush. Rolling over in the stormy light filtering in through a high window, Louis buries his face in Harry’s pillow and grins. He handles happiness the same way he handles sadness: one breath in, one breath out, nothing more. Happiness has proven to be hard to hold onto, and Jay is gone, but that won’t solve everything. Georgia is still going to rebel against every person who tells her to go to college. Fizzy and Lottie and Daisy and Pheobe still need to make it through middle school. Ernest and Doris are babies. They’ve got years left of living with Louis. It won’t be easy. 

 

Even if Harry does stay, it won’t be easy.

 

Instead of showering, Louis slips on his glasses and meanders downstairs. Toys are strewn all over the stairs. He picks them up with a sigh, places them back in their containers, back on their shelves. The house always feels empty without the kids here. He’s never sure what to do with free time, either. Does he try to find a job? Or will Niall offer him a position keeping bar again? Could he go back to the club and ask for his server position back? 

 

He’s walking into the kitchen, scratching right under the waistband of his sweats, when someone knocks on the door. A million questions and scenarios flash through Louis’ mind as he walks back to the front of the house. He’s ready, waiting, for Georgia to be at the door with some new offense against her. 

 

“Aiden?” 

 

The police man grins at Louis, eyes flickering up and down his body. Aiden has never bothered being inconspicuous. “Louis. How’re you?” 

 

Fighting against the urge to roll his eyes, Louis crosses his arms over his chest. He feels vulnerable: clearly wearing the marks of a night spent with someone else, sweats low, groggy from just waking up, warm and soft and now Aiden is here. “I’d be better if you’d tell me why you’re here right now, Aiden.” 

 

“Oh,” he looks down at his shoes, “Is Harry Styles here?” 

 

Louis _knows_ what that means. He bites down on his lower lip, trying to remember all the tells that his acting classes drilled into him. No looking up and to the left, no nervous twitching. Louis scrubs a hand through his hair and tries to look properly concerned instead of _frantic_ , “No, he’s not. Why? What’s going on, Aiden?” 

 

“One of the surgeons at the hospital seems to have misplaced his Mercedes Benz.” 

 

“Can he misplace it in my driveway?” Louis asks before he can stop himself. 

 

It works. Aiden leans forward with his laughter, body bowing against the doorjamb. Louis takes those few seconds to think about what he knows about what Harry’s doing today: he never mentioned going back to the hospital, not that Louis knows much about his plans anyway. They don’t generally discuss what Harry does beyond his stubborn insistence that he help out to pay for the rent and the utilities. 

 

Louis reaches out to touch Aiden’s arm, “I’m not sure where he is, Aiden. I’m sorry.” 

 

Aiden shrugs, eyes crinkled in a smile, “That’s alright, Lou. Sorry to bother you. Looks cozy,” he’s gesturing to the sweatpants low on Louis’ hips.  

 

 _Right,_ Louis thinks, “Have a good day, Aiden!” 

 

Without waiting for an answer, Louis closes the door. He doesn’t wait to hear if Aiden leaves, doesn’t wait for the squeal of sirens before he’s digging shaking fingers into his pocket to find his cell. Harry’s number is one of the only ones in the contact book. The phone begins to ring as Louis leans heavily against the wall across from the front door. 

 

“H _iiiii._ I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave me a message, and I’ll call you back!” _Beep._

 

“Harry,” Louis says. He thinks _don’t cry don’t cry don’t be fucking weak right now,_ “Aiden was just here, babe. I don’t— They know. They’re on to you, and I— I just want you to come home, please. I’m making your favorite for dinner, just please. Please come home, Hazza.” 

 

Louis hangs up and heaves a sigh that feels like it weighs nearly his entire weight. Sometimes, all of the people who’ve ever left him morph into one huge retreating shadow of empty promises, apologies, and _love you, Lou’_ s. Harry can’t become one of those shadows. Harry was supposed to be _better._ To stop himself from crying, Louis goes about his day. He showers and scrubs his skin until it’s red and Harry’s fingerprints are memories cradled between his thighs and over the rounded skin of his bum. 

 

Then, before the kids come home, he goes to the grocery store and checks to see if there are any more jobs in the “help wanted” section of the newspaper. Thankfully, Harry put a thousand dollars in the squirrel fund, so he doesn’t need to get a job right now, if he can’t. Still, Louis feels a bit useless without something to do. He wraps his arms around himself and sets off for the freezer section. 

 

When he’s finished putting the groceries away back home, he goes to Jesy and Zayn’s. Jesy is wearing nothing, of course, steaming the carpet.

 

“Hey, love,” she calls, like Louis can’t see every single inch of her body and the way that her bum is lifted by the high heels she’s wearing, “The babies are napping upstairs.” 

 

He’s careful not to get in her camera shot as he climbs their rickety, black and steel stairs. Up at the top, lying curled together on Zayn and Jesy’s bed, are Doris and Ernest. They’re sleeping soundly in the way that only babies seem to be able to. Louis, for a long moment, watches the even, peaceful rise and fall of their tiny chests. They’re the most lovely things that Louis has ever seen. He aches for them, for their childhood, for the home they’ll be brought up in. 

 

“Stop thinking about it,” Jesy commands quietly as she finishes typing a robe around her waist. 

 

He hasn’t even heard her come up the stairs. That’s when he knows, finally, that this is not going to be end well for him. He’s in too deep. She wraps an easy arm around him. They stand together and watch the babies sleeping for a moment, each thinking about other things. Jesy smells like Zayn’s cologne and laundry and baby and Louis hurts for her too. For her inability to have children and how badly her and Zayn want children. 

 

“Harry’s in trouble,” Louis says faintly. 

 

Jesy’s arm tightens, “Trouble or _trouble?”_

 

 _“_ The police kind.” 

 

“Oh, babe.” Jesy coos. Her curtain of hair tickles his arm when she leans against him, “Is it…?” 

 

“Grand theft auto, if they catch him.” 

 

“ _Fuck.”_

 

They live on the south side of Chicago, and there aren’t many people who can make a decent living here, who have the tools and the education and the clearheadedness. Louis doesn’t want to hold Harry’s decision to leave his family against him. His entire life has been a lesson in dealing with the cards that you’ve been dealt. Harry throwing away his own hand doesn’t have anything to do with Louis, it doesn’t—

 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do if he gets caught,” is what Louis finally says, low and rough and weak, “I don’t know— I love him, Jess.” 

 

“Oh, _Louis,”_ she turns her face into the side of his head, nuzzling his temple. 

 

They’ve been friends for so long, since before they both knew about boys and drugs and alcohol dependency running in families. If anyone understands how big of a deal Harry’s existence in Louis’ life is, it’s Jesy. Her arms are so tight around him, her breathing almost as familiar as his own against his temple. For a long time, until Zayn comes home and snuggles up against Louis’ other side, they stand like that. Zayn is volunteering to make them dinner when Louis disentangles himself. He picks up Doris, who is snoring faintly, and balances her against one hip before hoisting Ernest against his other hip. Then, trying to prepare himself for the very worst, Louis heads home.

 

Upon entering the house, everything is silent. 

 

“Hello?” Louis calls, closing the door with his bum. 

 

The kitchen is empty, as is the living room, when he looks there. He’s heading up the stairs, absurdly scared to even think about where his family is, the babies heavy in his arms, when he hears the sounds of laughter. Distinctly female giggling, underpinned with something deeper. Louis nearly drops Doris and Ernest in his rush to get into the room. Carefully, he places them on his bed. Then, trying not to run, trying not to _cry,_ he jogs down the hall to Georgia’s room. 

 

They’re on the bed. Lottie and Fizzy and Georgia looking at Harry like the entire world orbits around him. He’s got his hair braided back, probably by one of the girls, and he’s wearing sweats, relaxed and warm and loose limbed. Louis’ heart _thumps_ painfully in his chest. 

 

“Hey, Lou,” Georgia says, turning to look at him. Her hair’s a mess about her face, cheeks ruddy, eyes bright. “How’re you?” 

 

“I need some help with dinner, actually,” he rests his hip against the door, “Girls, can you go start on the spaghetti? Throw some garlic bread in the oven?” 

 

Lottie and Fizzy are a whirlwind of giggles and smiles as they flail past him and down the stairs. Georgia is slightly more reserved, although Louis is positive that she knows more than she really should about the situation. The way that she looks at Louis makes him feel transparent in a way that he doesn’t usually allow himself to be. When they’re all gone, Louis stares hard at the ground for a few moments, just to try to catch his breath. 

 

Harry is curled on his side, when Louis glances up at him. His green eyes are hazy, sleepy, beautiful, and he’s teething along his lower lip, like he might actually be nervous. Louis feels embarrassed about the message he left on Harry’s cell phone.

 

Before he can dwell on it for too long, Harry whispers, “I’m so sorry, Lou.” 

 

That should be the end of it. If Louis was smart, he’d let it die with that apology. Louis doesn’t know how to love people right, doesn’t know if he needs to demand answers or demand change or if he even has a right to do so. He can’t let himself fall in love with someone who’s just going to disappear. 

 

“Louis, I—”

 

“What would you do if I asked you to stop stealing cars?”

 

Harry’s response is immediate: “I’d stop.” 

 

“You can’t go to jail on me.” Louis whispers, “I can’t love someone who’s— who’s leaving me.” 

 

Louis would wait for him to respond if he was feeling stronger, if he didn’t feel like he’d laid himself bare within his sister’s bedroom to this man who he never meant to fall for. Turning around, careful not to glance at Harry, Louis begins to walk back towards the stairs. His life can’t stop for Harry or Harry’s poor choices. It’s obvious that Harry has crash landed off of the bed, but Louis isn’t expecting the arms that wrap around his waist or the way that they careen back into the wall. 

 

Harry nuzzles the cold tip of his nose into the nape of Louis’ neck, “I upset you.” 

 

His fingers are splayed wide over the notches of Harry’s spine under his tee shirt. Goosebumped, warm, familiar from nights spent kissing along his shoulder blades. Louis wants to disappear into him, “What did you expect?” 

 

“You wouldn’t even tell me that you loved me, Lou, I didn’t—”

 

“I couldn’t.” Louis says, because it’s true. It’s the truest thing he’s ever said to someone he loves. 

 

Harry huffs a warm, short laugh against the skin of his shoulder. “I want to be with you.” 

 

 _For how long_ is what Louis wants to say. Biting along his lower lip, he leans forward into Harry’s space, until they are pressed along each other at every line. It’s the safest he’s felt all day, the most calm. He whispers into Harry’s neck, “I want you to stop stealing cars.” Then, after thinking about it, “Please.” 

 

Thin, long fingers sift through the hair at the nape of his neck, “Okay.” 

 

He should wait. People in relationships wait for confirmation, for something, for a sign that they’ve been heard. Louis isn’t good at relationships. He’s never claimed to be anything other than the same fucked up boy from the south side that Jay and Dan didn’t think was good enough to keep, and his anger feels good. Keeping it close to his chest allows him to breathe outside of the bubble that loving Harry has put him in. He slips out of Harry’s hold and goes down the stairs to help with dinner.

 

**

 

It takes two days for Louis to finally say it. They’ve been tense, angry days. Harry withdraws into himself, disappearing for so much time that Louis has begun to suspect that he’s been lied to, which makes Louis feel on edge and betrayed. Mostly, they do what they have to do for the kids: there is something instinctual about how they move around each other in the kitchen, the way Harry grins as he brings the kids to school, pressing a light kiss to Louis’ temple despite how little they actually speak, how fleeting their touches actually are. They don’t tell the kids and the kids don’t recognize it and it’s not okay, but it works. 

 

On the second day, Harry comes back from dropping the kids off later than normal. He’s wet: curls formed into ringlets by his ears, lips ruby, tip of his nose and the apples of his cheeks pink. Louis is seated on the kitchen counter clutching a mug of coffee close to preserve the lingering warmth after he’s turned off the heater while the kids are at school. 

 

He doesn’t trust Harry today, not yesterday either. Still, every fiber of his body vibrates to the same tenor as the contented sound Harry makes when he takes off his jacket, the way his shoulders fold into themselves as he debates getting a cup of coffee. 

 

It’s not conscious: Louis is reaching out for Harry’s shoulders, twining around him, hooking his legs behind his back. They come together within the dingy kitchen, illuminated only by the grey sky and the flashes of lightning. Harry’s aborted reach for the coffeepot ends with his arms too tight around Louis’ back, their hummingbird heartbeats fluttering within their caged chests. Harry smells like breakfast, like kid, like the soft, powdery scent of Doris and Ernest, who are currently safely with Jesy and Zayn. He’s breathing too shallowly against the nape of Louis’ neck, clutching too tightly. 

 

Louis wants him so much he’s choking on it. 

 

“You’re _my boy.”_

 

Harry’s arms clench tighter around him.

 

“You’re _mine,”_ Louis whispers, hands scratching over the top of  Harry’s head, “You’re—”

 

He’s panting now. Just little puffs against Louis’ neck like there isn’t enough air in the room. 

 

“You’re _mine.”_

 

When Harry kisses him, it’s frantic. They meet with open mouths, Harry’s hands finding his chin to tilt him the right way for the best access. The way that Harry bites his mouth makes Louis feel raw in the same way that whispering _mine_ does, like he’s got blood on his hands and blood on the kitchen floor, blood everywhere. Every time Harry touches him, his fingers come away burning. 

 

“You are,” Louis breathes, when Harry begins kissing down his neck, “the most important boy.”

 

Harry’s grin presses his tongue against Louis’ neck, his canines dragging just barely across Louis’ jugular, “You think so?”

 

And it’s still so weird to hear Harry, _Harry_ , unsure about how he looks or if Louis actually wants him. Yes, it took Louis a little bit longer to hop on the “boyfriends” bandwagon, but that’s because he was terrified, not because he didn’t like the feeling of a happy, sated Harry curled up next to him after a long day, all slow blinking eyes and soft touches.

 

Louis nuzzles into the spot behind his ear that turns Harry into putty, “Always have been.”

 

“Been spending too much time with Zayn,” pretty, blown green eyes blink up at him as Harry’s fingers skim back and forth over his stomach, a just barely touch that has Louis’ body sizzling, “Turning into a sap on me.”

 

“’S that okay?” His fingers drift lower on Harry’s back, tuck under his boy shorts.

 

Harry blushes, giggles, pushes Louis’ shirt up up up so he’ll help shrug it off. “’S nice to hear, yeah.”

 

His entire life is a mess, and it’s not something he would’ve ever wished for anyone, least of all the boy he loves like a cheesy song, like a stupid card, like the stars he’s never in a place quiet enough to see at night. It’s just the way it is now. That doesn’t make it any better. Even as he’s opening his mouth to apologize, Harry is scooting forward, pressing close, hips working in circles.

 

“Don’t you dare fucking apologize,” he murmurs into the place between their faces. Louis is powerless to do anything but grab ahold of his bum cheeks and squeeze, press into the warm spot between them, so thankful that the kids are at school, that the rain has made things so intimate and warm. 

 

“’M not,” Louis arches up, grinds his clothed cock into Harry’s just to watch his head fall back. When Harry is moaning, low and unbroken, he leans forward to taste the stutter of his pulse, bites down, “’M gonna fuck you so good, babe. God, Harry.”

 

Louis loves a dirty fuck. There is something crazy insanely attractive about being bent over the back of the couch in the living room, legs spread, ass in the air, Harry pounding into him while the Chicago lights highlight the veins in his neck, the black ink across his back, the bruises along his hips. This is entirely different.

 

Harry picks him up, arms tight around his middle, and moves them upstairs, to the bed. They’re clumsy, bumping into walls, giggling into each other’s throats, Louis’ hands tightening and loosening around Harry’s neck. Louis falls into the rumpled white sheets, puts his glasses on the table, watches as Harry stretches out on his back like the best thing that’s ever happened to Louis, with his hand around his cock through his jeans and the lace he wears sometimes. Louis thinks it’s hot, and if Harry needs to discuss it further, Louis is more than willing. He hasn’t pressed for information beyond what Harry offered. Louis sheds his shirt, his sweats, grabs the lube with shaking fingers, crawls up the bed to hover over Harry.

 

They kiss softly, open mouthed panting into the air between them. Harry’s teeth catch along his lower lip, and Louis thinks about explosions and galaxies and how badly he wants this to be good for the boy beneath him, thinks about how much taking he’s been doing lately, and resolves to give more, as Harry sucks on his tongue. Harry works his hips in small, tight circles, back arched to press more snugly against Louis. In a second, Louis is flipping them.

 

“Caveman,” Harry breathes, delighted and blushing, leaning back down to his mouth.

 

His thin, fragile hips move gently a top Louis’ erection. Harry’s thighs are surprisingly thick: creamy white and spread wide, the little soft parts on the inside clenched to Louis’ hips. The friction from the lace is insane, makes Louis want to cant up into his body. They moan simultaneously. It’s like every other time they’ve done this, slow, circling hips, Harry’s fingers pressed tightly to Louis’ collarbones, Louis’ fingers caught up in the ends of Harry’s hair.

 

He’s smiling, small and dopey, up at Harry.

 

“Gonna fuck me?” Harry murmurs.

 

Louis’ fingers tremble around the bottle of lube just like every time he gets to fuck Harry. He’s still so scared, so baffled, so insanely turned on watching Harry’s body swallow up his fingers. All tight and puckered and pink. The only thing that’s different, Louis thinks as he slips his fingers under the elastic leg hole of Harry’s panties, is how Harry responds. Now, when Louis rubs over his hole, Harry arches his back, presses his bum back into the motion, rocks his hips so Louis can feel his balls against his chest, so unabashed and loud and _wanton._

 

The hand he has on Harry’s waist tightens as he slips his finger into Harry.

 

They move together: Louis’ thrusting gently, watching the careful emotions that flicker across Harry’s face. The room is nearly silent, just grey light, the sound of the rain beyond their porch, and the way that Harry’s breathing goes frantic and short as he reacts to Louis’ touches. 

 

Eyelashes fluttering, hips grinding down, Harry begins to worry his lower lip between his teeth, and Louis knows what that means. He slips a second finger in carefully.

 

Harry clenches, a quiet, “Yeah, please” slipping past his lips.

 

It doesn’t take much longer for Harry to start getting impatient. He knows Louis well enough that when he begins clenching down on Louis’ fingers, starts digging his nails into Louis’ collarbones, he knows that Louis is going tear those lacy panties right off of his slim hips.

 

Breathless, chuckling, Harry whispers, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Don’t even have to be quiet for the kids.”

 

The joke makes Louis laugh, chokes him with fondness. They’re always muffling their sounds, being fast about it, stealing moments away. Louis can’t imagine having this more frequently than he does now, can’t imagine how _good_ it’d be to hear Harry bring a house down while Louis ate him out over the kitchen counter again. 

 

“Yeah, babe,” Louis can hardly see past the way his smile has crinkled up his eyes.

 

Harry takes ahold of his cock while Louis takes ahold of his hips. It used to worry Louis: getting fully inside of Harry, how tight he is, how slowly he lowers himself. Now, Harry’s hips working in slow circles as he sits fully onto Louis’ cock (warm warm warm tight wet with lube hot), he feels like an idiot for ever doubting how hot it really is.

 

“Oh my god, Louis,” Harry breathes, hands biting into Louis’ chest.

 

Louis reaches behind Harry to feel where his rim has stretched to accommodate Louis’ girth and tries not to fuck up into him. They both, when Harry’s hips are finally cradled by his, moan out.

 

Harry, impatient, liking the burn a bit, begins to move not soon after. Watching Harry ride his cock is something that absolutely nothing in his life ever managed to prepare him for. He’s graceless when he’s walking or skating or running, and he’s so different here. Neck tipped back, the bob of his throat, the tiny _Lou_ _Lou Lou_ that he chants. Louis’ breath has always been snatched from him by Harry, from the very beginning. Louis dicks up into him because he can’t stand missing a second of the warmth, the heat, the pressure of Harry squeezing him from all sides.

 

When he thrusts up as Harry is sinking down, he must do something right, because Harry slips forward, collapses onto his chest. He keeps panting like he’s running a race, Louis’ hand in his hair.

 

“Alright, H?”

 

Harry nods, nuzzles into his throat, “Don’t stop.”

 

They stay pressed close, fucking long and slow, Harry’s prostate constantly assaulted. It reminds Louis of how well he knows Harry, how much he loves him. There is nothing that beats this: his boy pressed close, their noises mingling in a sort of harmony that no one could ever capture on a CD, bodies instinctive because they’ve been together for so long now, for long enough to know each other like this. 

 

Harry lifts his head up, looks into his eyes and whispers, “Love you so bad, Lou.”

 

Louis surges forward, kisses him, feeling way too much, murmurs, “Love you so bad too, H,” just as they come.

 

**

 

“I was thinking,” Harry murmurs, kissing at the _far away_ inked into Louis’ bicep. 

 

Louis laughs, stepping back into the running water to wash the shampoo out of his hair. They have an hour or so until Georgia will be home. Today has been like a pocket of paradise stolen in the middle of so many stressful things, so many stressful days all strung together. His eyes drift closed under the last of the warm water. 

 

“Don’t hurt yourself.” 

 

Harry’s lower lip juts out, “ _Heeey.”_

 

Teasing, Louis presses his body back into the warmth of Harry’s. Inside the shower, steamy with the dregs of the hot water, they kiss languidly. Harry’s hands keep roving, over the skin of his bum, over the dimples low on his back, counting the vertebrae of his spine, tracing long fingered over his shoulder blades. Louis smiles, arching into him. 

 

“What were you thinking about?” 

 

His arms are around Harry’s neck, allowing Harry to go back to the love bite he’s been sucking into the _far away._  

 

“Harry,” he chides, “Focus.” 

 

“I could go back to med school,” Harry brushes against his skin, “And we could, like. We could try it?” 

 

Louis doesn’t allow himself to panic. He and Harry have addressed their relationship enough times that he’s secure, at the very least, in the knowledge that they _are_ together. Running a hand over the wet hair splayed in ringlets at Harry’s neck, he whispers, “Try what?” 

 

“Like,” Harry breathes out, cold against the warmth of Louis’ arm, “Being a family?” 

 

Lukewarm water spilling over both of their bodies, trailing in rivulets to the floor, Louis takes a deep breath. There’ve been so many people who tried to make a family with them and failed, who left in the aftermath. Louis doesn’t know what to say. Harry is, of course, one of the best things that’s ever happened to him. Breathing out into the fragrant place where Harry’s neck and shoulder meet, Louis squeezes him more tightly. He kisses against that skin, one, two, three times. 

 

“Let me think about it, okay?” Louis whispers, “I love you, Haz, but—”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry sinks his teeth into _far away,_ “I know.” 

 

**

 

Louis wants to have an answer. He watches Harry curl up around Lottie and Fizzy, brush their wispy hair back into place as they read a book, and his chest feels too tight. That should be an answer. Still. Louis doesn’t know if he can allow Harry into their family without talking to each and every sibling he has, including a bit of cooing at Doris and Ernest. 

 

That night, when Louis slips into the bed next to Harry, he snuggles up under Harry’s neck without saying anything. Harry doesn’t push him. Hands spread warm and low over Louis’ back, Harry murmurs, “I love you.” 

 

Louis kisses the Harry bird on Harry’s chest, small, sucking kisses to the wingtips. 

 

**

 

The next morning, Harry presses a kiss to Louis’ temple and says, “Will you come somewhere with me?” 

 

They get into the Range Rover that Harry has taken to driving around. It’s a beautiful car: all plush leather and chrome, and Louis can hold Harry’s hand, even as they speed out of the south side towards a destination that Harry hasn’t shared with him. Louis trusts him. Underneath the low hum of the tires on the road, Harry’s got some grungy, unintelligible hipster band angsting about how _you’ve got a pretty kind of ugly face._

 

Louis snorts, tilting his head back on the seat, “What the fuck?” 

 

Harry looks at him when they reach a stop light, pouting out his lower lip, “Matt Healy is a lyrical genius.” 

 

Scratching at his collarbone under the edge of his maroon shirt, Louis raises an eyebrow, “I can’t understand a word he’s saying. He sounds like Doris when she can’t poop. Hazza, at least I can understand Beyonce!” 

 

Harry huffs a laugh against the steering wheel. They turn into a middle class neighborhood as Harry glances at him, fond and open, “Driver roll up the partition please, I don’t need you seeing Louis on his knees—”

 

Louis scowls, smacking Harry, “If I had a driver, I’d never have to be on my knees, so— Where are we?”

 

The house they’ve pulled up in front of is beautiful. It’s a normal looking house: white shutters settled comfortably in their spaces, black front door looking like it has a functioning lock, garage door against the ground, not a single piece of crumbling foundation. Louis has never seen something like this. Beside him, Harry is silent, watching the side of his face. The driveway is large enough for two cars, the grass is green and lush. He can imagine Doris and Ernest playing in it, maybe, in the midst of this quiet place. The neighborhood is all neat like this: tidy houses, two cars, fences and privacy and quiet. 

 

“Where are we, Harry?” 

 

Harry doesn’t say anything. He merely exits the car, zipping his coat up to his throat as he comes around to Louis’ door. It hasn’t clicked yet, why they’re here, and Louis is beginning to get impatient when Harry opens his door. 

 

They walk up the driveway holding hands. Harry keys in the garage code to the empty, clean garage, and lets them into a modern, open kitchen and living room. It’s one of the most beautiful houses Louis has ever been in. Everything sparkling clean, the floors warm and even beneath his feet, the walls unmarred from years of abuse.

 

Harry watches him as Louis trails his fingers over the working appliances wistfully. 

 

“You like it,” he says, voice low, tone even, nothing betraying their purpose for coming in his expression.

 

Louis leans back against the stove, arms crossed over his chest, “Of course I do,” he shrugs helplessly, “It’s clean and safe and the neighborhood is quiet and—” _I’m an orphan from the south side raising my entire family on money that I don’t have._

 

Harry’s smile is small, “I know you haven’t decided whether you want me to be a part of your family yet, and this— This isn’t—” Harry makes a frustrated sound low in the back of his throat, “I’m not _bribing_ you into being with me. There’s no pressure here. If you want to be with me, we can all move in here. If you don’t, then you can move in here with your siblings.” 

 

Everything in Louis’ entire world comes screeching to an abrupt halt. His heartbeat hammers too loudly in his ears, his stomach starts roiling in a way that makes him feel like he’s going to throw up. He’s looking at Harry, looking at his hunched shoulders and his twisting fingers, and his entire mind is blank.  

 

Harry begins to ramble, “Your siblings should have a safe place to grow up, Lou, and your house is falling apart. Like. I want to give you this, and I want to be with you, and I know this is a lot. You don’t have to— Jesy and Zayn are, obviously, still living in their home, but they could finance a house— My mom’ll—"

 

Louis opens his mouth, closes it, tries to think past the buzzing in his ears. 

 

“My mom wants you to have this place too. She wants you to—”

 

“You can’t be serious,” is the first thing that Louis can get out past the lump in his throat. 

 

Harry falls silent, “I am.” 

 

“You _aren’t,”_ Louis is shaking: his head, his hands as he tugs his sweatshirt sleeves over his hands, his resolve as he tries to figure out how to get home without collapsing into an emotional mess on public transport, “You’re not serious, Harry. Do you even _hear_ yourself?” 

 

“I do,” Harry says evenly. 

 

“You bought me a house,” Louis looks down at the floor, fights against the part of himself that insists this is a silly joke. Harry can walk away from him, away from this life, but Louis never can, “You bought me a _house.”_

 

 _“Us,”_ Harry’s footsteps get closer and closer, “I bought us a house.” 

 

Dragging a hand over his tired eyes, Louis murmurs, “Why are you doing this?” 

 

“I love you,” like those words come with a binding contract and the penalty of jail time if they’re misused, “I _love_ you, Lou, better and— _softer_ than I’ve ever loved anyone.” 

 

Louis looks up at Harry with squinted eyes, “You really do talk some shit, you know that?” 

 

“That wasn’t—” Harry’s fingers catch his wrist. In the morning light, he looks young and tired, as exhausted as Louis feels. There is still the part of Louis’ mind that whispers accusingly _think of Nick, think of Stan,_ _think of Jay._ They’re all people who tried to love him and failed. What makes Harry different? Peeking out of his lavender sweater, the wing tips of the swallows that Louis still feels undeserving of. Hesitantly, Louis presses his fingertips to the Harry bird, “I love you softer than anyone else in your life does,” Harry murmurs, thumb stroking across Louis’ pulse, “I’m not asking for marriage or forever. I’m just— I’m just asking for you to let me love you softer.” 

 

“What does that mean?” Louis asks weakly. He doesn’t want to fight with Harry anymore, not when he could be loving him. “What does that even mean?” 

 

“I just want to keep you safe,” is what Harry breathes, “Let me keep you safe. Let me take care of your family. I’m not— I’m not trying to leave you or trick you or hurt you.” 

 

Louis chokes on a sound that can’t decide if it wants to be a laugh or a sob. 

 

“I’m right here,” Harry’s fingers catch the hinge of his jaw, “and I’m not going anywhere. For as long as you want me.” 

 

The backyard has a fence around it and lush, green grass. Louis could save up money for a grill or a swing set, something fun for the kids, for their new safe home. 

 

Louis feels like he might be handing Harry a gun but he says, “I think I might want you for a long time.” 

 

Harry’s fingers tilt his face up. Louis closes his eyes. “Look at me.” 

 

“Can’t,” and it’s a repeat of getting Harry back, it’s a repeat of Jay asking Dan whether he was going to try to stay, it’s a repeat of Jesy’s doctor whispering _I’m sorry but that’s very unlikely, can’t,_ it’s a repeat of Louis’ entire life stretching behind him in an endless procession of _can’t._

 

 _“Can,”_ Harry murmurs, voice closer than before. He brushes kisses to Louis’ forehead and eyelids, “Open your eyes, Lou.” 

 

“What if you leave me?” 

 

Everything falls quiet.

 

Harry’s fingers bite into his wrist, “I bought a house for _us._ I’m not planning on going anywhere. What happens if you leave me?” 

 

It’s another of the moments where Louis is forced to confront the reality that relationships are two way streets. He’s giving Harry a lot of opportunity to hurt him, but isn’t Harry giving him the same? They fell together too quickly, too intensely, too much always. Harry has been there though. Harry has stopped stealing cars for him. Harry is debating going back to med school _for him._

 

Louis blinks open his eyes to find Harry staring intently at his face, “I’m not going to leave you.” 

 

Harry dimples at him, “Please live here with me.” 

 

It’s not that easy, “I can’t afford this house, Harry, you know—”

 

“My dad paid for it,” Harry shrugs, “Some misguided attempt to get back into my good graces after the whole abuse thing. I didn’t. It’s not okay, but.” 

 

Louis isn’t sure whether he wants to strangle the sheepish, scared look off of Harry’s face or kiss it off him. Who buys the poor boy with a billion and a half siblings they’ve been seeing a new house? It was presumptuous and _huge_ and terrifying and— 

 

“I’ll move in with you.” 

 

Harry’s eyes widen, his hands tightening briefly on Louis’ face before they ease off, “You’ll move in with me?” 

 

He’s biting down on his lower lip, terrified that Harry will change his mind now, “Yeah, if you wan— But you have to be absolutely sure you want to do this with me, alright?” Louis draws a shaky breath. Giving someone the chance to reject him has never gone particularly well for him. 

 

The corner of the counter digs harshly into the meaty center of Louis’ back when Harry tackles him in a hug. They sway for a moment, right until Louis can lock his hands over the rocky crests of Harry’s bony spine, can contain his frantic _thank you, thank you, Lou, I do, please, Lou_. Harry is sweet, a bit frantic in his thanks. Louis just wants him to be happy, in that moment, in the same way that Harry has made him happy, will make the next few days weeks _months_ of his life about it. If he can give Harry something like this, he will. God, he would in every time, every place. 

 

Harry snuffles into the skin of his neck, cold nose drawing back and forth as he whispers, “I love you so much.” 

 

Louis takes a deep breath that feels a lot like stretching, “Thank you so much.” 

 

Harry’s laugh is muffled against the skin of his neck, raises goosebumps on his skin, “Will you believe me now? When I tell you that I’m not going to leave?” 

 

It’s. Louis isn’t sure. Time, he thinks, will be the only way to truly know if Harry means what he says, and they don’t have time right now. They have to spend time together, more time together. It’s not something that he will know without a doubt tomorrow or the next day, but in that moment, Louis is whispering, “Yeah, Haz, I believe you,” and _actually believing him._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
